Writers working to elucidate the history of
same-sex erotic relationships identify a strong homoerotic element in Lawrence's life, while scholars, including his official biographer, have been accused of "attempt[ing] to defend Lawrence against 'charges' of homosexuality."
Lawrence did not discuss his sexual orientation or practices. There is one clearly
homoerotic passage in the Introduction, Chapter 2, of
Seven Pillars of Wisdom: "quivering together in the yielding sand, with intimate hot limbs in supreme embrace."
The book is dedicated to "S.A." with a poem that begins:
:"I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands
:and wrote my will across the sky in stars
:To gain you Freedom, the seven-pillared worthy house,
:that your eyes might be shining for me
:When I came."
It is unclear whether "S.A." identifies a man, a woman, a nation, or some combination of the above. Lawrence himself maintained that "S.A." was a composite character. Lawrence himself once said: "I liked a particular Arab, and thought that freedom for the race would be an acceptable present." If "S.A." does refer to a particular person, a likely possibility is
Selim Ahmed, nicknamed "Dahoum" ("Dark One"), a 14-year-old Arab with whom Lawrence is known to have been close. The two met while working at a pre-war archaeological dig at
Carchemish; Lawrence had the boy move in with him, carved a nude sculpture of him which he placed on the roof of the house in Greco-Roman style, and brought Ahmed on holiday to England. The two parted in 1914, never to see each other again, as Dahoum died of
typhus in 1918. Boston University Professor Matthew Parfitt (who never met Lawrence) maintains that "in
Seven Pillars, and more explicitly in his correspondence, Lawrence suggests that his distaste for the entire exploit (i.e., the Arab Campaign) in its last triumphant days was largely owing to news of his friend's death."
In
Seven Pillars, Lawrence claims that, while reconnoitering
Deraa in Arab disguise, he was captured, beaten, and sexually molested. Modern biographers have questioned whether the incident ever occurred: there are problems with the chronology of Lawrence's account, whose subsequent sex-life revolved around male flagellation, while the Ottoman commander whom Lawrence accuses of whipping and sodomising him went on to lead a blameless post-war life without a hint of scandal. Lawrence's own statements and actions concerning the incident have contributed to the confusion: he removed the page from his war diary which would have covered the November 1917 week in question.
It is true that Lawrence hired a man to beat him, making it clear he had unconventional tastes, notably
masochism. Also, years after the Deraa incident, Lawrence embarked on a rigid programme of physical rehabilitation, including diet, exercise, and swimming in the
North Sea. During this time he recruited men from the service and told them a story about a fictitious uncle who, because Lawrence had stolen money from him, demanded that he enlist in the service and that he be beaten. Lawrence wrote letters purporting to be from the uncle ("R." or "The Old Man") instructing the men in how he was to be beaten, yet also asking them to persuade him to stop this. This treatment continued until his death.
Discussion about Lawrence's sexuality began with
Richard Aldington's scathingly critical
Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Inquiry (1955).
Richard Meinertzhagen wrote in his Middle East Diary that upon meeting Lawrence, he asked himself, "Boy or girl?" – though historians widely consider this to have been added after the fact. The play
Ross (1960) by
Terence Rattigan, as well as the famous film
Lawrence of Arabia, helped introduce the idea into popular culture.
In a letter to a homosexual man, Lawrence wrote that he did not find homosexuality morally wrong, yet he did find it distasteful. In the book
T.E. Lawrence by His Friends, many of Lawrence's friends are adamant that he was not homosexual but simply had
little interest in the topic of sex. Not one of them suspected him of homosexual inclinations. Like many men of the time, T.E. Lawrence had little pressure to pursue women. Unlike most men of his time, he also had little inclination. E.H.R. Altounyan, a close friend of Lawrence, wrote the following in
T.E. Lawrence by His Friends:
:"Women were to him persons, and as such to be appraised on their own merits. Preoccupation with sex is (except in the defective) due either to a sense of personal insufficiency and its resultant groping for fulfilment, or to a real sympathy with its biological purpose. Neither could hold much weight with him. He was justifiably self sufficient, and up to the time of his death no woman had convinced him of the necessity to secure his own succession. He was never married because he never happened to meet the right person; and nothing short of that would do: a bald statement of fact which cannot hope to convince the perverse intricacy of the public mind."