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Re: You're oversimplifying it

Posted by diogenes on 2025-November-1 11:09:05, Saturday
In reply to Re: You're oversimplifying it posted by Nightlight on 2025-November-1 07:43:38, Saturday
One has to admire the chutzpah of your tone of supercilious authority, ridiculing the notion of relying on actual scholarly sites such as GLTTA, whilst at the same time revealing the source of your own information as Wikipedia!

The breathless account of the Wikipedia article, needless to say, leaves rather a lot out. The Wikipedia article does not, as it so happens, say that Douglas deflowered literally thousands of kids, but the article does mention Rachel Hopes Cleves' comment that Douglas once boasted that he had deflowered 1100 virgins. This refers to a conversation described by Annie Bryher (the novelist) in her wonderful memoir The Heart of Atlantis:
“Did I hear that you walked down the Via Tornabuoni alone at six o’clock yesterday?” he asked me at one of the first of our meetings.

“Why, yes, Miss James asked me out to tea.” She was an elderly lady who was staying at our hotel, “Did you think I might get lost? I know the way now perfectly.”

“Never do it again.” Douglas looked at me severely as if I had broken his favourite snuffbox. “No lady goes out alone in Florence after four o’clock. What were you doing in a tearoom anyhow? Poisonous places, full of envy and gossip. And very bad for the liver. If you ever go again, take a cab and remember it must be a closed one, otherwise I shall have to leave whatever I am doing and escort you back myself.”

If anybody else had suggested that I needed to be guarded I should have slapped them but, as with Gertrude Stein, there was no arguing with Douglas; you obeyed him reasonably or he did not see you again.

He discussed the cost of girls on equal terms, “Prices have gone up,” he said, shaking his head, “in 1905 it was a hundred lire. Ah well, I’ve had eleven hundred virgins in my time but that’s all over. Very happy they were too. I gave the lire to the father, a turquoise bracelet to the girl and most of them made excellent marriages. Remember, the secret is, never deal with the girl directly but always with her family. But a virgin isn’t much use to you,” [Bryher was a lesbian] he glanced at my skirt, “never mind, you’ll get over it, have a pinch of snuff.”
The figure of eleven hundreds virgins was obviously plucked from the air and probably not meant to be taken too seriously. Bryher wasn't the least bit scandalised or offended: “It was cool, impersonal and essentially Roman.” Bryher goes on to describe how Douglas took a liking to her and took her education in hand, and how much she benefited from it. “Douglas taught and explained, he never once said, 'You are too young to understand.'”

Now, that ND at one time liked young girls (before realising that boys are prettier) is certainly the case. But there is no evidence whatever that he raped or abused any of the girls, or operated outside what were then the norms of Italian society, or treated the girls with anything other than respect. The families of the girls were always involved and consented, as well as the girls. Even Rachel Hope Cleves admits this in the case of Anyuta Ponomareva, the one instance where we have the most information. The notion that he left behind him a trail of embittered and traumatised families is rubbish:
He was about to return to Capri for the first time since the war. I was at the harbour to meet him when the steamer arrived and let nobody tell me that he was not loved there. The news of his arrival spread from mouth to mouth. I have never seen a political leader enjoy so great a triumph. Men offered him wine, women with babies in their arms rushed up so that he might touch them, the children brought him flowers. I slipped away as he walked slowly through a crowd of several hundred people, shouting jokes in ribald Italian, kissing equally the small boys and girls and patting the babies as if they were kittens. The signore had deigned to return to his kingdom and I am sure that they believed that the crops would be abundant and the cisterns full of water as a result.
Of course, your contributions to this site are meant as destructive rather than illuminating, but I really think it would be wise to learn a little about Douglas before diving in. You have attempted to portray him as some sort of predator, but this is totally contrary to the evidence from his beloved boys. Read the letters for yourself. And I can only suggest that you read Mark Holloway's biography of him rather than parroting Presentist propaganda from Wikipedia. ND is fascinating as perhaps the most recent example of a pederast who believed that a man should not only love his boy but continue to be a friend and support to him for the remainder of his life. Douglas really is relevant today because he shows what boylove could be like at its best.

No one is saying that we can behave now in the same way that Douglas behaved in an earlier era. Obviously, we must take account of laws and public attitudes. But AK Smith did not seem to be able to acknowledge that boylove could be anything other than a sickness. He compared boylove to heroin addiction and mental illness. “[M]y attraction is fueled by my emotions of anxiety, depression, etc. No different than how an overeater's eating habits are fueled by emotions and not by actual hunger.” Well, this is purely personal, but says little about pederasty as an historical phenomenon, and that's the point.

AK Smith also said “There is no cure for being a boylover.” Well, thank Allah for that!


diogenes
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