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acceptance of purely cosmetic differences that pose no threat to the 'hegemonic' order. Yes. Working mainly with immigrants over the years, I developed a form of racism. New Indian chaps would arrive, looking all very Indian and creating in me all sorts of expectations (sense of humour high among them) -- very occasionally they'd turn out to be second-gen and possess speech and thought patterns indistinguishable from tedious whitey. I found that very hard to forgive. Race traitors. I am, as always, appalled by the idea - though my nightmares centre not on any kind of paternalistic state telling us what we may do, but rather on the horror of an hedonistic culture insisting that we must, at all costs, take the enjoyment that is our due. How fortunate we are that we boy-perverts (and, more importantly, our young friends) are for the moment spared such barbarities. Very well said and I agree - up to a point. I've always maintained that if boy-love had won its 70s freedom on the terms proposed, a 13yo boy would have been the public face of AIDS. But this and other of your posts suggests you see no potential for GOOD pederasty at all. That boy-love can only stay on the right side of the good-evil divide if it stops short of sexual expression. I wouldn't agree with that -- it's been good in the past and there's no reason why it can't be again. Admittedly, though, it might have to wait till the next civilisational cycle for a realistic shot. You say we're "fortunate". I can't help getting the feeling that personally you enjoy the Platonic or Aschenbachian form of boy-love. I have a constitutional yen myself in that direction. But today we're just as determined to exterminate the chaste love as the carnal. And the results are possibly more barbarous than the wanton alternative. And all the richest rewards of Platonic love tend to flow to the man. There's something selfish in it, a holding within oneself of all the exhilaration boys are so good at provoking (so good it appears to be a design feature). Socrates soared while untethered, untouched Alcibiades wandered disastrously astray. Socrates might have been chaste, but he was promiscuous, and that is boy-love's enemy whether sex is involved or not. Loving mentorship has to remain the ideal. The gains a young friend will make within a genuine loving mentorship leave Aschenbachian flights of fancy in the dust. Now we just need a civilization worthy of the real deal. |