Re: The Time for Paternalistic Pederasty Has Passed

I would be interested in Edmund’s thoughts about this. I agree. Classical Greek boys exercised considerable agency (like most pre-modern boys everywhere) and chose their lovers, but fathers could effectively veto would-be suitors. I think by far the best analysis of what would induce a boy and his father to accept one is in the linked-below section of Dover's Greek Homosexuality, which I posted to GLTTA as the best part of his excellent book. I would suggest an absolutely critical reason why Greek pederasty worked so well is that boys were to some extent wooed in public. As a result the suitor's chances were poor unless he could convince not just the boy, but his father (and, almost certainly, behind the scenes, the mother) and most of his social circle that he was good for the boy. No doubt there was the odd boy who was frustrated by paternal opposition to a suitor, but I'd suspect there were many more who, consciously or not, were thankful they had fathers who looked out for them. The boy then had the implied reassurance that if he found himself falling in love, he could give himself knowing that his suitor had been vetted to make sure he was who he said he was and was not hiding some ugly history of letting boys down once he had had his way: the “dark horse” indeed of the male libido. I wonder whether you are not overly-influenced by your upbringing in a society that was not just extremely homophobic, but increasingly contemptuous of boys' agency, and in which the traditional trust between fathers and sons was breaking down under the influence of feminism, divorce and the newly-important generation gap. I know you are aware that there have been societies like the Greek and Japanese where parents could accept men they saw as good as their sons' lovers, but have you thought about what an inconsequential thing the generation gap when social change was gentle and most boys had roughly the same values as their great-grandfathers? In the broad generality of history and obviously with exceptions, fathers and sons have wanted the same things for the sons, have struggled for them together and have loved and trusted each other deeply. I'm not sure about Plato's sense of humour, but if he had any at all, he would surely have laughed at the idiocy of the American professor trying to imply the love relationships he described in his dialogues should be a model for women. As for rejecting the only known successful model for pederasty, where the roles of the man and boy were complementary rather than egalitarian, the mystery for me is this: if a boy is not to fall for a man because the man offers a model of what he would like to become, offers him the protection and reassurance that can only come from someone stronger and more experienced, offers him practical training and long-term patronage and support, then why do you think a boy (or at least a non-gay boy) would ever want a man as a lover? What's in it for him? Why not stick to his own age group? www.amazon.com/dp/1481222112 (https site) Pursuit and Flight by Sir Kenneth Dover [@nonymouse] [Guardster] [Proxify] [Anonymisierungsdienst]