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The notion that our society has uniquely decided that "children and their feelings matter" is so absurd one doesn't know where to begin -- one place YOU could begin is to read carefully Kit's "thinking aloud" post in this thread. The word "children" is now regularly misused, and that is no accident. The word's proper meaning in common usage is people before puberty; in a perfect example of the deliberate political abuse of language, it has been stretched to include people who are a decade or more beyond their first wet orgasms or menstrual discharges. Second, the notion that the hysteria/persecution is motivated by concern for "kid's feelings" is almost perfectly backwards. The hysteria has at its core the removal of agency from "children." If the hysteria and persecution had concern for "children's feelings" as its object, the"children" would be consulted on their "feelings" which they never are. We are told that "children" cannot consent. This is exactly the opposite of the truth. "Children" are not allowed to give consent -- i.e., not allowed to be full members of the human community with control over their bodies and their "feelings." Third, while it is true that pederasty (a term I prefer for at least this part of the discussion to "boylove") has often had an exploitative element to it, that is equally true of all other forms of human sexuality. I mentioned in my post above two books on homosexuality in pre-modern Japan. The books make clear that boys from samurai families could reject or welcome (or even seek out) advances from older men -- in fact, they had more power in their choice of lovers than women from the same social class did in their choice of husbands. It is true that simultaneously there was widespread exploitation of lower class boys -- boys ending up as prostitutes -- but again that was also true of girls. And if only because boys were more valuable at home working in the rice paddies than girls, the exploitation of poor girls was far more widespread. Roughly the same could be said from what I understand of the ancient Mediterranean and medieval Persia (although to be sure by the time of the Roman Empire, pederasty had become almost entirely exploitative -- a key reason why it was so condemned by the early Church fathers). Point is that societies have been all over the map in the way that pederasty has been understood and practiced -- same as with all other forms of human sexuality. Finally, attraction to young people (both BL and GL if you will) has been essential to the survival of the human species in that if the only person who was interested in and took delight in a given child was the child's mother, no child would last very long. That attraction may not be overtly erotic, but make no mistake -- eros is wrapped up in it. Evolution has made "children" beautiful and sexy for a reason. As to the survival value of BL specifically, it is an essential ingredient in male group bonding which again, has been critical to the survival of the human species. Rind has done some interesting work demonstrating that pederasty almost always tended to emerge in tribal societies that were under pressure, either from other tribes or the need to hunt to supplement gathering (or both). See samuel77's post below. SR |