Post a response:
|
Hey there. I'm new to posting here, but I thought I would speak on this, as it's a tension I've increasingly begun to feel. I am not a boy-lover. I am, however, someone who appreciates youth, vitality, and male beauty. I've begun to look at art that depicts BL themes for this reason, even making some of it myself, but I feel a lot of discomfort when such youths are spoken of very frankly. The Chicken Hawk documentary comes to mind, especially the section where Allen Ginsberg reads what I find to be an extremely distasteful poem about a boy. I have a similar reaction to content that is not BL focused, if it is not refined, but my response on both ends are more extreme. I do find boys to be very beautiful, aesthetically more pleasing than adult men by far, but I have a much more guttural reaction when the men they are engaged with seem to objectify rather than elevate their boys, than I would for the same in an adult. I seem to feel a great disgust when they are treated more as body parts with ages than as, well, boys. I suppose my real question here is, do you have any thoughts about why such an aesthetic approach seems to be dying out? From what I know, in Greek culture, such love was deeply idealised and not just carnal, though it was undoubtedly erotic, it couldn't be reduced to more basal eroticism. Fin-de-siecle pederasts only seemed to dial this idealisation up, "the love that dare not speak its name" et al. I do not wish to vilify boy-love in its erotic dimensions, nor do I seek to offend or grate against anyone here, my reactions are just personal taste rather than moral imperatives. Perhaps my own lack of erotic attraction to boys is to blame here, though when I look at what pederasty has become after maybe the mid 1900s with Gide, that more aristocratic strand seems to have died out and been replaced. Any thoughts, critical or analytical, would be appreciated. |