Re: Two conundrums?

I realise that in your reply to Pharmakon you posed two conundrums, and I only attempted to answer (or rather challenge the existence of) one of them, namely the apparent (but IMHO illusory) contradiction between the tastes of historical pederasts and your non-muggle friends today. I admit I haven't attempted to answer the question "of how our culture became so freakish, such an outlier in these matters", but this is a quite different subject deserving separate attention. As regards the other conundrum you've mentioned, which I didn't try to answer earlier (the conflict between the androgynous appeal of boys and the function of pederasty in masculinising them), I would suggest that it too is illusory. It has posed superficial problems of explanation, which different societies have answered in different ways, which you summarised excellently yourself in your first post on this thread. I say it is also illusory because there is really no conflict if one accepts that sexual bonding has quite different functions at different stages of life. It is you yourself, above all others, who have over the years most eloquently explained this. www.amazon.com/dp/1481222112