'Today's boylovers tend much more often ...

than the men of the pederastic era to be attracted only to boys and not to women." This is not only a very interesting observation but worth pondering and "unpacking" as they say. I have seen and read nothing to contradict or undermine what you have said here. To be sure, I know of (and count as close friends) men who are attracted to both boys and women. But in none of those cases are they also attracted to any male beyond puberty, even quite young, "boyish" men. And there aren't very many of them to begin with. The great majority of my BL friends are either attracted exclusively to boys or, while being primarily attracted to boys, also find young, "boyish" men appealing (I put myself in the latter group.) Guys in both these groups have no interest in females of any age. Meanwhile, my gay friends also have no erotic interest in women but certainly recognize and respond to cute boys -- they shy away from them because it's illegal or they think it wrong or whatever. Now my personal experience hardly qualifies as an adequate data base from which to draw generalized observations. But it sure fits everything I read and encounter. And yet, we know from the historical research of scholars such as Pflugfelder (pre-modern Japan), Rocke (Renaissance Florence), Trumbach (early modern England on the eve of industrialization) and Harper (Rome of the High Empire) -- to name four disparate cultures/eras -- that sexual attraction to both women and boys was considered the norm for men, and that, as you put it, "It was specifically the femininity of boys that made them sexy to men in ways that other grown men were not." If all this is true -- and an ever-growing body of scholarship supports it -- then we are confronted with a conundrum: how is it that what we see around us so contradicts the historical record? It seems to me that the only resolution of this conundrum lies in more than just accepting that the so-called "fixed" nature of sexual orientation is a political construct rather than rooted in biology (I don't CHOOSE to have these feelings!!) but rather that the culture plays a much deeper role than many suppose -- that what you pick up in the air around you, as it were, has a far more profound influence on erotic desire than is generally supposed. And this is where the political significance lies. I'm prepared to admit that the "Achilles heel" of pederasty lies in the perceived risk of feminization -- risk to the boy and to those who care for the boy (particularly fathers but also male authority in general). In societies that disparage the feminine (at least among those who are not female), it's obviously going to be problematic to accede to a desire (desire for boys) rooted in an attraction to the feminine when the rationale/justification for actualizing that desire lies in somehow masculinizing the object thereof (boys). You have the hots for him because he has smooth skin, rosy cheeks, soft, silky curls, high sweet voice, is playful and deliciously submissive, then you proceed to treat him like you would a woman -- fuck him up the ass -- and then you expect this somehow to help him become a man? Huh? Societies have dealt with this conundrum/contradiction in different ways: you can only legitimately fuck low class and/or slave boys (Rome); you can admire the boy but must be careful not to feminize him with too much ass-fucking (Attic Greece, although I realize this is disputed); boys need that masculine fuck-juice to become men (New Guinea); we know it's all over the place but let's not talk about it directly(Florence); let's pretend that boys never take any pleasure from taking it up the rear; that learning to put up with discomfort in order to please a superior is good training for eventually assuming one's place in highly hierarchical, martial society (Japan). But the conundrum is still there. We live in a time of rapid cultural shifts, a time in which the very foundations of culture are being eaten away. If one accepts that culture may be as critical as biology in shaping desire, then it's not surprising that desire itself may be shifting -- is up for grabs as it were. The old smear of feminization (you take it up the ass like a woman; how can you be -- or hope to become -- a real man?) is, as I've noted, losing its power. So far, that applies to men but not to boys. I suppose that could change. One can only hope. SR