ATTRACTION TO CHILDREN BY EDWARD BRONGERSMA
“Attraction to Children” is the second section of “Adult Lovers”, the second chapter of Loving Boys, the encyclopaedic study of Greek love by the eminent Dutch lawyer, Edward Brongersma, of which the first volume (including this) was published by Global Academic Publishers in New York in 1986.
As early as 60 years ago psychoanalyst Wilhelm Stekel[1] wrote of the sexual attraction to children, “My experience has taught me that this is very nearly a normal component of the sexual impulse. Almost everybody will, at one time or another, discover himself thinking such thoughts, rejecting and condemning them, however, with all the emotion of moral indignation. Many people of high moral and cultural standards have confessed to me that such sinful thoughts have been inspired in them by children…. We hardly realise how constantly present paedophilia is in men and women.”
Sixty years later the well known German sexologist professor Sigusch found it much less difficult to deal with these “sinful thoughts”. According to him adults have problems if they don’t desire tenderly sexual relations with a child.[2] In France, Gabriel Matzneff[3] calls the absence of child-love “a bad symptom” and in England Rosemary Gordon[4] a psychoanalyst follower of Jung, wrote in 1976, “paedophilia, the love and sensuous experience of child and youth, is a normal and universal phenomenon.” “When these factors are considered it is clear that the sexual preferences of the paedophile are not so far removed from those of the normal man as they might at first appear.”[5]
It is now technically possible to make laboratory tests of what images excite a man sexually. The penis of the subject is introduced into an apparatus which measures the degree of its swelling and records it with an instrument called a plethysmograph. The Clark Institute of Psychiatry in Canada wished to so examine “paedophiles” in order to distinguish their responses from “normal” males. Pictures of naked children were shown to laboratory subjects of both groups. The outcome was surprising: the so-called “normals” reacted with a penile swelling equal to that of the paedophiles! It appeared that one simply could not establish in this way any difference between them and men who had had sexual contacts with children.[6]
English investigators, using this method at Broadmoor Hospital and Wormwood Scrubs Prison, were equally puzzled by the “overlap between normals and detected paedophile offenders.”[7]
The French psychiatrist Françoise Dolto claimed that many fathers and mothers act like paedophiles toward their children. In one investigation into parent/child relations a mother said of her son, “As for his body and physical contact with his father, they like to romp like lunatics with each other, stark naked. They give each other massages and do all kinds of things together. There is a lot of sensuality between father and son.[8]
In this field, all distinctions and categories must be relative. But even keeping this in mind, we must not lose sight of the fact that there are those men and women for whom eroticism with children has a very special significance or importance. There are many intermediate positions between being poor and rich but this doesn’t keep us from designating a certain group of people as wealthy. Thus we can define as child-lovers (paedophiles) those people in whom the (universal) attraction to children is more pronounced than in the majority of their fellow beings: it is so clearly pronounced, in fact, that it takes on the greatest importance, dominates, colours and gives direction to the sexual side of their lives.[9] Jacques de Brethmas[10] defines himself as one of these in declaring, “If someone would speak about me without mentioning my boy-love he wouldn’t give a complete picture; it would remain the picture of someone else. To a very large degree, all my emotions, feelings, all my preoccupations, my whole life is directed to, consecrated to, staked out on what lies closest to my heart: boys.”
It was in psychoanalytic literature that the proposal was made to define such people as those who “require the co-operation of a child-partner of the same or opposite sex in order to achieve sexual gratification.[11] To them the child is the human being at its most attractive and beautiful. The presence of children excites them and makes them happy. They are always looking for the chance to be in the company of children. The choice of hobbies and professions is often guided by such sexual tendencies (teacher, youth leader, paediatrician). Their erotic dreams and masturbation fantasies are filled with naked children.
Other distinguishing characteristics seem to be lacking. No external features separate the child-lover from people in whom this inclination remains in the background. Only one person can make a sure diagnosis, and that is the person himself. For only he knows what he feels, what he dreams of, what he fantasises. No one else can tell.
We must strongly stress that the actual sexual activities of an individual give only a poor indication, never proof, of his sexual tendencies. There are non-paedophiles who have intercourse with children. This is easy to understand, since there is a certain percentage of paedophilia in every human being. On the other hand there are paedophiles who never dare to touch a child. Neither the sexual activities with a child nor their absence is decisive proof, or counter-proof, of paedophilia.
Schofield[12] and other investigators following him have offered convincing proof that the homophile individual is distinct from other human beings only in his preference for partners of the same sex and in no other respect. In my experience the same applies to child-lovers.[13] In them, as in homophiles, a tendency common to human nature is more pronounced than in the average human. That is all. If it seems that we find in both of these groups a somewhat higher percentage of strange personalities, this might be more due to the stress placed upon them by a society which persecutes, punishes, insults, ostracises and despises them than to some innate character defect.
The Different Forms of Child-Love
Adults especially attracted to children can be either male or female; their appetites can be directed chiefly along homosexual or heterosexual lines. Thus there are four possibilities. Three of these we will deal with now, briefly, to confine ourselves for the rest of this work to the fourth.
Since the enormous success of Nabokov’s famous novel Lolita, this kind of relationship has received a great deal of attention and open discussion. Of males sentenced for sexual acts with children, the number who have had contacts with girls is always considerably higher than those who have had relations with boys.[14] A Swiss investigation, for example, reveals that 52% of the accused had had relations with girls, 21.8% with boys, 5% with both girls and boys, while 20% had committed incest, mostly fathers with their daughters.[15] In general, Baurmann[16] states, “the victims in criminal cases are 70-90% girls and 10- 30% boys”. It shouldn’t be forgotten, however, that criminal statistics never present a true picture of sexual activity endemic in society. Parents are certainly more prone to inform the police in cases of sex contacts with young girls than with young boys, and this introduces a bias into the statistics. Moreover it appears that boys on the whole respond more positively to sexual approaches by adults than do girls and are therefore less inclined to tell their parents about them.[17] Research among students about their childhood experiences hardly give the impression that girls are much more exposed than boys to sexual approaches by adults.[18] Sexual violence against little girls is not so much committed by child-lovers as by “normal” heterophiles having recourse to the child as substitute for the woman they really desire.[19]
Recently a German author living in Holland, H. S. Scheller, has dealt with this subject in a series of “paedophile” writings.
It is not unusual for the initiative to originate with the child. Stekel[20] cites the case of a nine-year-old girl seducing a man in the most sophisticated manner. In the archives of the Brongersma Foundation there is one tape recording made by a man during intimate play between himself and a twelve-year-old, and a second, recorded later, with an eight-year-old girlfriend. It is evident that the children enjoy this play very much; one can hear how they insist on more advanced sexual activities and implore the man to insert his penis, which he refuses to do. Of course, in smaller girls insertion is often impossible.[21]
According to O’Carroll, many thirteen- and fourteen-year-old American girls have complete sexual intercourse with men and like it.[22] A fourteen-year-old French girl wrote in her diary in 1978, after having slept with a 47-year-old man, “This was the most marvellous day of my life, the most beautiful Christmas gift. Everything I did was deliberate, and everything that happened was at my initiative.” Unfortunately the girl’s parents, after reading these pages, succeeded in having the man who gave their daughter this wonderful experience sent to prison. The feelings of the child were of no importance.[23]
In another period and in some other cultures this would hardly have created a sensation. According to tradition, one of the Prophet Mohammed’s wives was no more than six years old at the time of their first intercourse.[24] The English social reformer John Ruskin loved a girl of ten[25] and the German poet Novalis had sex with one of twelve.[26] Theodor Storm and Dostoyevski were also enamoured of twelve-year-olds.[27] “Thomas Jefferson once wrote to George Washington that two fourteen-year-old girls would be available for sexual relations if he came to visit.[28] Charlie Chaplin married Lita Corey on her 16th birthday, but he had been courting her ever since she was seven (Canard Enchaîné 28.10.81).
It is also true that it is in this kind of relations that the worse of what can be done sexually by an adult to a child occurs most frequently: violence, rape and, more traumatizing still, abuse of authority to compel the girl to tolerate sex activities which she abhors. The Pall Mall Gazette revealed in 1885 that in London the deflowering of ten-year-old girls had become a popular and frequent sport. As it proved impossible to satisfy professionally the increasing demand for “fresh girls”, women specialists were employed to sew up the maidenheads of the unhappy creatures after they had been used.[29] It is typical that such a disgusting excess would have happened in the prudish Victorian Age, permeated as it was with negative feelings about sex.
The first studies of homosexuality only dealt with men. It was a long time before lesbian women began to break through this conspiracy of silence and speak openly about their loves and their sexual pleasures. Queen Victoria is reported to have been convinced that women were incapable of wanting and doing such horrible things and this is the reason why English penal law still makes no mention of female homosexuality.[30] The same mentality is shown by the contemporary German feminist leader Alice Schwarzer,[31] who doubts on principle that women can really be paedophiles “because sexuality in women is not an exercise of domination”.
It is quite crude, of course to place paedophilia willy-nilly on par with “exercise of domination”. Ada Schillemans, a Dutch woman psychologist, flatly contradicts her, and even goes so far as to say “Women not paedophiles? In the true sense of the word, I think nearly all of them are.” Ms. Schwarzer’s contention, that literature, with the exception of court cases involving “sodomy”[32], doesn’t mention lesbian love-relationships with young girls comes closer to the truth. But until recently literature was just as silent about all forms of lesbian love even though this has always been a very common phenomenon.[33]
There is only one exception: Plutarch mentions that in Sparta not only men loved boys, but “beautiful and noble women” likewise loved girls.[34] In March 1984 the Belgian paedophile monthly L’Espoir published seven reports written by women. A Dutch publisher announced a book by a sixteen-year-old girl who was in love with girls between six and ten years of age.[35]
Recently – at last – descriptions of love between an adult woman and a young girl have begun to be published. Beth Kelly’s moving story Speaking Out on Woman/Girl Love, or Lesbians Do “Do It” was published in 1979 and told about her relationship as an eight-year-old girl with her great-aunt. Another woman, Sky, starts her story with: “Although my best friend called me a ‘lesbian’ at age 9 when I tried to sit very close to her, I didn’t consider myself a lesbian until I was 11.” At that time she met some lesbian friends of her mother.[36] Leïla Sebbar[37] mentions a similar case, and Dagmar Döring[38] tells about “so much love, tenderness, exuberance and savageness” in a “long-lasting, also sexually rather intense relationship with a girl”. Other examples are given by Kraemer[39], Pieterse[40], Möller[41] and O’Carroll[42], and Borneman[43] describes paedophile lesbian prostitution.
It has been suggested that attraction to children of the same sex is less common in women than in men.[44] Kinsey[45] is one of this opinion and Bell & Weinberg[46] found that almost none of their adult female respondents had a partner under 16 years of age. Perhaps this is because the physical differences between a girl and an adult woman are much less pronounced than those between a boy and a man.[47] The boy-lover feels himself attracted by characteristics of the young body which are absent in the adult male. But it is the exceptional woman who is particularly attracted by those characteristics which make a girl different from an adult female.
This kind of love has been magnificently celebrated by the French author Pierre Louys in his Chanson de Bilitis.
Two female researchers of child love, Loes Rouweler-Wutz[48] and Monica Pieterse[49], could find no reason to believe female was more rare than male paedophilia. It should be stressed, however, that the female form has much wider social acceptance.[50] The traditional role of women as caring for children with a great deal of physical tenderness offers her greater freedom.[51] A woman cuddling and kissing a little boy in public is thought of as a dear soul; a man doing the same thing is likely to be looked upon as a child molester. It is generally believed that women’s sexuality is not as genitally focused as is men’s. Therefore far fewer women than men are brought to court accused of “indecent assault” upon children. Only about one in every 200 such court proceedings are brought against women.[52]
Recently an English judge even went so far as to say in his decision that for a woman to have sexual intercourse with a boy between 12 and 15 was perfectly legal and normal.[53] According to an investigation among students in Michigan, 18% had been introduced by older women to sexual intercourse before the age of 15[54], and in Sweden 31% of the boys have their first intercourse in this way.[55] Havelock Ellis[56] refers to the special attraction the “innocence of the young boy” has for many women[57]. Schofield, however, found the incidence much lower in England, only 2% of the boys he studied having had an adult woman as partner on the occasion of their first intercourse. He said, “The proselytizing older woman in search of virgin boys is either a myth, or very unsuccessful.[58] In The Netherlands P. Vennix found that among boys who had had sex with adults, 25% had had it with women.[59]
For the most part the bigger, more mature boy is, of course, a very willing “victim” in seduction.[60] The official Dutch Speijer Report made the point that he is often waiting to be seduced. “Seduction” therefore is the wrong term; what happens is an initiation, an introduction into the use of the genitals.[61]
Initiation by an experienced woman may be a big help for a boy as he progresses toward adult sex life. The Danish author Carl Erik Soya describes in detail the practical lesson a married woman gives to Jacob, the handsome hero of his novel Sytten (Seventeen). Jacob is at loose ends; he fervently wishes to switch over from masturbation to actual intercourse but is reluctant to make this clear to his female cousin, Vibeke, whom he adores. After his initiation by the married woman he rushes to realize his dreams, first with Vibeke and then with other women. It is a modern version of the famous classical pastoral of Daphnis and Chloe (Longus). Daphnis, too, didn’t know how to satisfy his desire for Chloe; a merciful woman taught him how it was done.
12: Sylvain, a French youth, had belonged to a naturist youth group ever since he had been a little boy and had camped and played sports naked with the other children. Sex play was common there, and Sylvain also had sexual contacts with his older brother Denis, who likewise was a member of the youth group. At 14 Sylvain went on a holiday trip with the leader of the group and his wife. The three of them shared a bedroom, and Sylvain had sex both with the man and the woman. At 15 he got to know a young woman who became infatuated with him as soon as she discovered what a skillful sexual partner the young sportsman was. Now every afternoon she picked him up in her car when he left school, and he quit the naturist group to spend all his spare time with his new lover (Personal communication).
It is hardly unusual for a mother to feel attracted to her son, and complete intercourse may well be less rare than public opinion supposes.[62] These contacts can start at an early age.
13: A 35-year-old mother told Gauthier, “When he was only 18 months old my six-year-old son was having erections as soon as he touched me. He would mount me and make the motions of intercourse; I thought this was nice and disarming.”
In his justly famous movie, Souffle au coeur (Murmur of the Heart) Louis Malle shows an affair leading up to intercourse between a young doctor’s wife and her favourite 14-year-old son Renzo; this starts him off in the direction of sexual activity with girls of his own age. For both mother and son it is a beautiful secret. Guyotat[63] shows a similar sensitive understanding where, in his admirable and horrifying novel Tombeau pour 500,000 soldats (Tomb for 500,000 Soldiers), he describes the first intercourse of young Serge: it is with his youthful stepmother. She enjoys his artlessness and inexperience. Until that moment Serge has known no other sex than masturbation and his intercourse with Emilienne makes him feel he has entered a whole new world. “You have liberated me,” he says gratefully.
Most older boys have the same feelings when they are “seduced” by an older woman; she helps them overcome their shyness in approaching a girl.
14: A 15-year-old boy told me how a married woman, in whose garden he was working, invited him inside to have a cup of coffee with her. She sat in such a way that he could see far up under her skirts, and he became highly excited. She then asked him whether he liked what he saw, for the direction of his quick looks was unmistakable. He immediately said yes. “Would you like to see it all?” He nodded enthusiastically. She asked him to follow her to her bedroom, where she undressed completely and asked him to do the same thing. Then she drew him to her, took his erection and inserted it in herself. The invitation was extended several times thereafter, and the episode repeated, but gradually his interest diminished because he was now starting to have sex with girls and with them he felt more at ease than with the woman. (Personal communication)
15: “My first serious relationship was with a much older woman. She was twenty-six and I was thirteen, but she thought I was fifteen. It was in the summer in New Hampshire. She was an artist, and she really loved me. We were very serious. I loved her a great deal too. I couldn’t believe anything so big could happen to me.” The boy’s father discovered, however, what had happened, and put an end to the summer romance. “I never, ever saw her again, never talked to her again. I still think about her once in a while.[64]
In Latin and Arab classical literature we come across discussions between women about the advantages and disadvantages of boys as sexual partners. In Burton’s translation of the Thousand Nights and a Night a woman praises the beardless boy for his smooth skin and artlessness, but her friend protests, “How shall I spread-eagle myself under a boy, who will emit long before I go off and forestall me in limpness of penis and clitoris; and leave a man who, when he taketh breath, clippeth close and when he entereth goeth leizurely, and when he hath done, repeateth, and when he pusheth poketh hard, and as often as he withdraweth, returneth?[65]
Not all experienced women share that opinion, and some take to boys just because of their youthful potency. About the Roman Empress Theodora (527-565) it is said that she liked to seduce beardless youths. “Many a time she would go to a community dinner with ten youths or even more, all of exceptional bodily vigour who had made a business of fornication, and she would be with all her banquet companions the whole night long, and when they were all too exhausted to go on, she would go to their attendants, thirty perhaps in number, and pair off with each one of them.” (Procopius IX, 8-15) A lady who played an important part in the French Revolution used to become sexually excited by travelling in a mail-coach. Therefore on long journeys she took along a 14-year-old boy who was able to satisfy her appetite at every halting-place.[66] In the Eighteenth Century such relations even became a fashion; many women “preferred the adolescent boy – pretty, unthreatening – to the mature male.[67]
Ernest Ernest published an extensive collection of sexual inscriptions (graffiti) found in French public lavatories. There were some in which a woman tries to attract boys: “Big woman with enormous tits wants to meet young, inexperienced boys to initiate them.”[68] A 29-year-old woman told Gauthier, “I’m crazy about very young boys who have never done it yet. I like the idea of making them familiar with my body and with their own. Rather frequently, however, it is all a sham. They hold much too stubbornly to their preconceptions of what they are supposed to do.[69]
16: Each of three brothers individually confessed to a man with whom they also had relations that he had been initiated into sexual intercourse at about the age of fourteen or fifteen by a married neighbour lady. Despite great pride in this adventure, each had carefully kept it a secret from his brothers. (Personal communication)
17: Sociologists interested in what went on in a lake region near Amsterdam where water sports were popular discovered that a number of prostitutes from the red light district near the port were spending their holidays there. It seemed it was their special pleasure to initiate sexually mature but inexperienced boys into sexual intercourse. Used as they were to older, often unappetizing clients, these fresh, handsome, sportive boys held for them a special attraction; the “pupils’ ” clumsiness in their first sexual adventures was highly pleasurable to these prostitutes and appealed to their mother instinct. Perhaps in some cases there was a sadistic impulse present to destroy the “innocence” of the boys. (Personal communication) Other instances are mentioned in Sonenschein.[70]
Such an experience can be very beautiful and enriching for the woman as well as for the boy.[71] If the woman acts with tenderness and tact and does it right the boy may be grateful for the rest of his life. Such episodes stimulate the imagination and evidently give rise to fantasies which are exciting to a lot of people, as witness the abundance of American porn books passing themselves off as scientific studies of sex between women and boys – and even between mother and son. The frequent moralizing tone fails to hide the real feelings of the author.
One classic is Les amours du chevalier de Faublas by Jean-Baptiste Louvet de Couvray; another, dealing with incestuous relations, is Arthur Schnitzler’s Frau Beate und ihr Sohn.
Of course the manner and circumstances in which such an important and memorable thing happens to a boy may strongly influence his subsequent evolution and have lasting consequences.[72]
18: A boy on his way home from boarding school for his Christmas holidays shared a railway compartment with a beautiful woman. They struck up a conversation, and when it grew dark and they settled down to sleep the woman started to press one of her feet against his lower stomach and genitals. Intensely excited, the boy jumped into her arms and had intercourse for the first time in his life. Pleasure and happiness swept through him like a hurricane. She kissed and caressed him tenderly. He was now madly in love with her. The next morning the train arrived at its destination. With cries of joy, the woman ran into the embrace of – her husband who, with their three children, had come to meet her. A casual smile for the boy with whom she had spent the last night of passion, and she was gone. The boy stood there, utterly shattered, convinced that no man should ever trust a woman’s honesty or fidelity.
It is likewise unfortunate when a boy, overwhelmed by his sexual urgings, or on the insistence of comrades, has his first experience in a brothel (a favourite theme of many novels!) or receives practical instructions in a cold and businesslike atmosphere. It is worse still if he is subjected to violence.
19: Karl-Eduard, fourteen, was sent on an errand to a certain Mrs. T., forty-five. When they were alone she undressed completely. The boy said afterwards, “She pressed her big tits into my face with so much force that I nearly suffocated…. Then she pushed me into her bedroom and into her husband’s bed…. ‘Let me go!’ I repeated. ‘I don’t want to do this until I’m older and I’m married.’ But she threw me on my back on her husband’s bed, tore my trousers off me and exposed my penis. Then she bent over, took it in her mouth, bit it so hard it hurt me and I cried out. I tried to stand up again but Mrs. T. pinned me down. Then she squatted on me so I couldn’t move. She sucked on my cock until I shot my sperm, which she swallowed, smacking her lips loudly. Then she made me get up and told me I could always return if I wanted to…. But I never came back and told my parents all about it afterwards.[73]
20: Clarence Osborne was the Australian boy-lover who documented his sex relations with some 2500 boys between the ages of 13 and 20. One of them told Osborne that he had literally been raped by a young woman. She invited him to have sex with her, but he refused because he knew she was very promiscuous and he was afraid of catching from her some kind of venereal disease. But she got two men to grab him and hold him down, and then she rubbed his penis until it stiffened, inserted it and rode upon him. “And I spurted all my seed into her belly.[74]
Of course, the initiative sometimes originates with the boy himself:
21: “My first real honest to goodness (oh so good) sexual experience was when I was a freshman in high school in Davenport, Iowa. I had a six-month-long ‘affair’ with a widow on my paper route. She was an ‘older’ woman of thirty-five and I was a youth of thirteen or fourteen. I always liked older women.[75]
22: Sutor[76] tells of a servant named Demba in a French African colony who saw that his mistress was waiting in vain for the officer she loved. “The negro boy, who was a very handsome lad, with eyes like a gazelle, and a form like an antique faun, but already a man, so far as the size of his genital apparatus was concerned, though he had not yet arrived at the age of puberty, ventured to enter the chamber where the lady was still fretting over the absence of her lover. I cannot describe here, in full and realistically, the scene in which Demba showed the lady, proofs in hand, that he was in love with her, and that he was of a size to satisfy her desires.”
Where there is demand there is always supply, and therefore prostitution. Paul Léautaud writes in his diaries of boys who told him about their female clients in the Bois de Boulogne: the women gave handsome tips to be licked by them.[77] I heard the same tale from a Dutch sailor boy in Hamburg. And a handsome Portuguese bell-boy, who was willing and able to satisfy male as well as female clients, complained of overwork during the holiday season when he had to tend to his hotel duties all day long and then spend the night having sex with French or English female tourists. He did, however, make a lot of money this way.
Now we come to the kind of relationship which is the real subject of this book.
It should not be equated with the others just discussed. All of human history and even the precursors of human behaviour in the animal kingdom, suggest that we are dealing here with a much more important phenomenon. In one of his conversations with Chancellor Friedrich von Müller, Goethe stressed that “Boy-love is as old as humanity, and thus we could even say that, though it is contrary to nature, it nevertheless conforms to it.[78] Dr. Wainwright Churchill confirms that in the Animal Kingdom “The cross-species and cross-cultural data also reveal that homosexual contacts occur most frequently between a younger and an older male rather than between mature males of the same age. Often there is considerable disparity between the ages of partners…. Fully developed males usually regard each other as sexual rivals rather than as sexual partners. On the other hand, an encounter between a younger and an older male, especially if the younger male is not fully mature, may lead instead to sexual responsiveness on the part of both. Younger, less physically developed males of course are not as differentiated as females in either appearance or temperament, and they are usually more passive and less aggressive than older males, making sexual union easier and more successful between the two. At the human level these biological factors may be no less important, but in addition psychological factors seem to play a big part.[79] The Dutch scientist A. Kortlandt filmed chimpanzees in the African jungle; he observed that older males had anal intercourse with younger males nearly as frequently as they mated with females. American researchers like Maslow and Count found a similar behaviour pattern in other species of monkeys in their natural settings, even in the presence of females.[80]
In general one can affirm that homosexuality is found most frequently in the higher mammals, the brains of which are closest in development to those of human beings. Male dolphins rub their penises on the soft belly of younger males, the same thing they do when trying to arouse females into copulating with them.[81]
Strato (d. 270 bc) made mention of the homosexual play of young dogs; since his time homosexuality has been observed in nearly every vertebrate animal species, among fishes even, and in the mammals from bats to dolphins, from the elephant to the horse, and especially – as we have already observed – in monkeys. Most commonly the young animal tries to establish a nonaggressive attitude the female adopts for coupling. The older animal then mounts the younger and makes the motions of intercourse.[82] The stock breeder who wants to have sperm from a bull can excite him, make him mount and ejaculate on a bull calf.[83]
The young animal is recompensed with protection, caresses and often with food. Here is the prototype behaviour of what we also observe in humans. Every claim that boy-love is not in harmony with nature is undermined by what actually takes place in nature itself.
Ancient Greek mythology contains a great deal of keen psychological truth. It is striking how many stories deal with gods enamoured of beautiful boys and having sex with them – while there’s not a single instance of a goddess loving a girl.[84] Everywhere and at all times on earth there has existed a special bond between men and boys, and like every other deep human relationship it strives for physical expression.
Continue to "Man/Boy Relationships", the next section of this chapter.
[1] Stekel, W., Psychosexueller Infantilismus. Berlin: Urban & Schwarzenberg, 1922, pp. 311, 320. {Author’s reference]
[2] quoted by Bendig 1980, 9 [Author’s reference]. It is not clear to which of three works by Bendig published in 1980 and listed in the bibliography this refers.
[3] 1977, 80 [Author’s reference]. It is not clear to which of two works by Matzneff published in 1977 and listed in the bibliography this refers.
[4] Gordon, R., Paedophilia: Normal and Abnormal. In: Kraemer et al (Eds.) The Normal and Abnormal Love of Children. Kansas City (MO): Sheed Andrews & McMeel, 1978, p. 44. {Author’s reference]
[5] Wilson, G. D. & Cox, D. N. The Child Lovers. London: Peter Owen, 1983, p. 126. {Author’s reference]
[6] Campaign Against Public Morals, Paedophilia and Public Morals. London: CAPM, 1980, p. 38. {Author’s reference]
[7] West, D., Treatment in Theory and Practice. Points from the Discussion. 12. In: West (Ed.), Sex Offenders in the Criminal Justice System. Cambridge: Institute of Criminology, 1980, p. 220. {Author’s reference]
[8] Schérer, R., L’emprise. Des enfants entre nous. Paris: Hachette, 1979, p. 176. {Author’s reference]
[9] Groot, D. de, Pedofilie. ‘s-Gravenhage: PSVG, 1981, 4; Nationaal Centrum, 1976; Rouweler-Wutz, L., Pedofielen, in contact of conflict met de samenleving? Deventer: Van Loghum Slaterus, 1976, p. 5. {Author’s references]
[10] Brethmas, J. de, Traité de chasse au minet. Paris: Perchoir, 1979, p. 64 {Author’s reference]. The same book makes it clear that de Brethmas’s sexual interests were almost entirely limited to boys of 14 to 17, so it is absurd to claim he “defines himself” as a “paedophile” (lover of pre-pubescent children). [Website footnote].
[11] O’Carroll, T., Paedophilia – The Radical Case. London: Peter Owen, 1980, p. 60. {Author’s reference]
[12] 1965 [Author’s reference]. It is not clear to which of two works by Schofield published in 1965 and listed in the bibliography this refers.
[13] Brongersma himself demolishes this extraordinary claim in the later section of this chapter titled “Personality traits of boy-lovers.” [Website footnote]
[14] Wegner, A., Die Sittlichkeitsdelikte an Kindern und Jugendlichen in der Nachkriegszeit. Bonn: Röhrscheid, 1953, p. 53 ; Janus, S. The Death of Innocence. New York: Morrow & Co., 1981, p. 222; Linedecker, C. L., Children in Chains. New York: Everest House, 1981, p. 191; Baurmann, M. C., Sexualität, Gewalt und psychische Folgen. Wiesbaden: Bundeskriminalamt, 1983, 137, 217, 491; Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Crime of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Sexual Exploitation of Children. 16. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977, p. 358. {Author’s references]
[15] Wyss, R., Unzucht mit Kindern. Berlin: Springer, 1967, 11. {Author’s reference]
[16] Baurmann, M. C., Sexualität, Gewalt und psychische Folgen. Wiesbaden: Bundeskriminalamt, 1983, p. 137. {Author’s reference]
[17] Finkelhor, D., Sexually Victimized Children. New York: Macmillan, 1979, p. 70. {Author’s reference]
[18] Kirchhoff, C. & G. F., Untersuchung im Dunkelfeld sexueller Viktimisation. In: Kirchhoff & Sessar (Eds.), Das Verbrechensopfer. Bochum: Brockmeyer, 1979, pp. 285-286. {Author’s reference]
[19] O’Carroll, T., Paedophilia–The Radical Case. London: Peter Owen, 1980, p. 59. {Author’s reference]
[20] Stekel, W., Psychosexueller Infantilismus. Berlin: Urban & Schwarzenberg, 1922, p. 323. {Author’s reference]
[21] Janus, S. The Death of Innocence. New York: Morrow & Co., 1981, p. 276 gives an example. {Author’s reference]
[22] O’Carroll, T., Paedophilia – The Radical Case. London: Peter Owen, 1980, pp. 124, 126. {Author’s reference]. Surely this is Brongersma at his weakest, citing one book by a pedophile activist for such an important and obvious truth when he could have cited any number of first-hand accounts, especially the many memoirs written before the late-19th century conception of the idea that there was anything wrong with sex between men and pubescent girls. See, for example, Casanova’s vivid and convincing descriptions in his memoirs of mutually passionate sex with girls as young as eleven. [Website footnote].
[23] Schérer, R., L’emprise. Des enfants entre nous. Paris: Hachette, 1979, p. 269. {Author’s reference]
[24] Simons, G. L., Het grote seksuele records boek. Amsterdam: Triton, 1977, p. 171 {Author’s reference]. Either Brongersma or his pointlessly-cited secondary source is exaggerating. Mohammed’s youngest wife was Aisha whom he married when she was six or seven, but the marriage was not consummated until she was nine or ten. Among several early biographies of Mohammed that say this, see, for example, the early 9th century Kitāb al-Ṭabaqāt al-Kabīr by Ibn Sa'd [ebsite footnote]
[25] Campaign Against Public Morals, Paedophilia and Public Morals. London: CAPM, 1980, p. 37. {Author’s reference]
[26] Leonhard, R. H., Auch Novalis war ein Sexualdelinquent. Die Zeit, 12 Sep. 1969. {Author’s reference]
[27] Matzneff 1977, 16-17 [Author’s reference]. It is not clear to which of two works by Gabriel Matzneff published in 1977 and listed in the bibliography this refers.
[28] Janus, S. The Death of Innocence. New York: Morrow & Co., 1981, p. 18. {Author’s reference]
[29] Stoll, O., Das Geschlechtsleben in der Völkerpsychologie. Leipzig: Veit, 1908, p. 555. Dühren, E., Englische Sittengeschichte. Berlin: Marcus, 1912. {Author’s reference]
[30] The “report” about Queen Victoria’s views appears to be a popular myth, however credible. However, it is true that as late as 1921, the British Parliament refused to illegalise it (at any age) on rather different grounds. On 4 August 1921, Mr. Macquisten moved an amendment to the Criminal Law Amendment Bill which sought to criminalise lesbian behaviour. The amendment was later defeated in the Lords on the grounds (first given in the Commons by Lt.-Col. Moore-Brabazon) that it would draw attention to lesbians and “do harm by introducing into the minds of perfectly innocent people the most revolting thoughts” (House of Commons Debates vol. 145 c1806, 4 August 1921). An obvious reason why lesbianism, unlike sodomy, had not been made illegal much earlier was that it was not condemned by the Bible.
However, it was not true to say that woman/girl sexual relations were still legal in English law when Brongersma was writing, as section 14 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956 made it an offence for a person (male or female) to make an indecent assault on a female, regardless of her consent if she were under 16. [Website footnote].
[31] Schwarzer, A., Emanzipiert Pädophilie?. Emma 4: 5, 1980. {Author’s reference]
[32] Everard 1983 [Author’s reference; the book is not in his bibliography].
[33] Borneman, E., Lexikon der Liebe. Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978, p. 1149. {Author’s reference]
[34] Plutarchus, Vergleichende Lebensbeschreibungen. Übersetzung von Kaltwasser. Leipzig: Reclam, 1921, I 142 {Author’s reference]. The real (primary source) evidence for this is Plutarch’s Life of Lykourgos 18 iv, which says “this sort of love [between men and boys] was so approved among them [the Spartans] that even the maidens found lovers in good and noble women.” [Website footnote]
[35] Vandenbosch 1984 [Author’s reference, but the book is not in his bibliography]
[36] Campaign Against Public Morals, Paedophilia and Public Morals. London: CAPM, 1980, pp. 28-30. {Author’s reference]
[37] Sebbar, L., Le pédophile et la maman. Paris: Stock, 1980, p. 292. {Author’s reference]
[38] Döring, D., Soviel Liebe und Zärtlichkeit. In: Hohmann (Ed.) Pädophilie Heute. Berlin: Foerster, 1980. {Author’s reference]
[39] Kraemer. W. et al, The Forbidden Love. London: Sheldon, 1976, pp. 30-35. {Author’s reference]
[40] Pieterse, M., Pedofielen over pedofilie. Zeist: NISSO, 1982, II 104. {Author’s reference]
[41] Möller, M., Pedoflele relaties. Deventer: Van Loghum Slaterus, 1983, p. 95. {Author’s reference]
[42] O’Carroll, T., Paedophilia – The Radical Case. London: Peter Owen, 1980, pp. 88-90. {Author’s reference]
[43] Borneman, E., Lexikon der Liebe. Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978, p. 1149. {Author’s reference]
[44] West, D., Homosexuality Re-Examined. London: Duckworth, 1977, p. 212. {Author’s reference]
[45] Kinsey, A. C. et al, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. Philadelphia: Saunders, 1953. {Author’s reference]
[46] Bell, A. P. & Weinberg, M. S., Homosexualities - A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women. London: Mitchell Beazley, 1978, p. 94. {Author’s reference]
[47] Sebbar, L., Le pédophile et la maman. Paris: Stock, 1980, p. 65. {Author’s reference]
[48] Rouweler-Wutz, L., Pedofielen, in contact of conflict met de samenleving?. Deventer: Van Loghum Slaterus, 1976, p. 4. {Author’s reference]
[49] Pieterse, M., Pedofilie. Doctoraalscriptie Rijksuniversiteit Leiden, 1978, p. 24. {Author’s reference]
[50] Plummer, K., Pedophilia: Constructing a Sociological Baseline. In: Cook & Howells (Eds.), Adult Sexual Interest in Children. London: Academic Press, 1981, p. 228; Janus, S. The Death of Innocence. New York: Morrow & Co., 1981, p. 263 ; Gordon (1976) 43 [Author’s references, but no book by Gordon published in 1976 is in his bibliography].
[51] Califia, P., The Age of Consent: An Issue and its Effects on the Gay Movement. The Advocate 303: 18-23 & 304: 16-23, 45, 1980. p. 20; Howells, K., Adult Sexual Interest in Children: Considerations Relevant to Theories of Ætiology. In: Cook & Howells (Ed.), Adult Sexual Interest in Children. London: Academic Press, 1981, p. 62; Righton, P., The Adult. In: Taylor (Ed.), Perspectives on Paedophilia. London: Batsford, 1981, p. 34. [Author’s references]
[52] Walters, D. R., Physical and Sexual Abuse of Children. Bloomington (IN): Indiana University Press, 1975, p. 118. [Author’s reference]
[53] O’Carroll, T., Paedophilia – The Radical Case. London: Peter Owen, 1980, p. 92 [Author’s reference]. Given that in the vigorously pro-heterosexual culture of the modern anglosphere, most men had vivid boyhood memories of lusting desperately after beautiful women, boy/women relations were the hardest of the four adult/child possibilities for the child sex abuse lobby to demonise successfully. It was only with The Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 2000 that these became illegal in England. Thereafter, cruel punishments were regularly inflicted on women who succumbed to boys’ lust for them. As usual with vicious anti-sexual legislation, this had started earlier in the USA. [Website footnote].
[54] Kirchhoff & Sessar (Eds.), Das Verbrechensopfer. Bochum: Brockmeyer, 1979, p. 284. [Author’s reference]
[55] Zetterberg, H. L., Het seksuele leven in Zweden. Den Haag: NVSH, 1969, p. 31. [Author’s reference]
[56] Ellis, H., Studies in the Psychology of Sex. Philadelphia: David, 1913, III 221. [Author’s reference]
[57] Borneman, E., Lexikon der Liebe. Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978, p. 734. [Author’s reference]
[58] Schofield 1965, 61 [Author’s reference]. It is not clear to which of two works by M. Schofield published in 1965 and listed in the bibliography this refers.
[59] KRI 1984, 23. [Author’s reference]
[60] Walters, D. R., Physical and Sexual Abuse of Children. Bloomington (IN): Indiana University Press, 1975, p. 127. [Author’s reference]
[61] Speijer, N., et al, Advies inzake homoseksuele relaties met minderjarigen. Bijlage bij de Memorie van Toelichting. Ontwerp van wet tot intrekking van artikel 248bis van het Wetboek van Strafrecht. ‘s-Gravenhage: Staatsuitgeverij, 1970, Sect. 7.1 & 7.3.6. [Author’s reference]
[62] Walters, D. R., Physical and Sexual Abuse of Children. Bloomington (IN): Indiana University Press, 1975, pp. 121-128. [Author’s reference]
[63] Guyotat, P., Tombeau pour cinq cent mille soldats. Paris: Gallimard, 1967, pp. 222-228. [Author’s reference]
[64] Janus, S. The Death of Innocence. New York: Morrow & Co., 1981, p. 294. [Author’s reference]
[65] Burton, R. F., The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night–A Plain and Literal Translation. London: Burton Club, 1885, V 165. [Author’s reference]
[66] Breton, G., Histoires d’amour de l’histoire de France. Paris: Noir et Blanc, 1960, XI 300. [Author’s reference]
[67] Walters, M., The Male Nude. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978, p. 209. [Author’s reference]
[68] Ernest, E., Sexe et graffiti. Paris: Moreau, 1979, p. 35. [Author’s reference]
[69] Gauthier, X., Dire nos sexualités. Paris: Galilée, 1976, p. 150. [Author’s reference]
[70] Sonenschein, D., What is Pedophilia Anyway? 1983, [Author’s reference]
[71] Borneman, E., Lexikon der Liebe. Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978, p. 341. [Author’s reference]
[72] Wegner, A., Die Sittlichkeitsdelikte an Kindern und Jugendlichen in der Nachkriegszeit. Bonn: Röhrscheid, pp. 26-27. [Author’s reference]
[73] Stieber, H., Verführt… Bonn: Europäische Bücherei, 1971, p. 16. [Author’s reference]
[74] 1977, 120 [Author’s reference, but it is not clear to which of four works published by Osborne in 1977 in his bibliography he is referring].
[75] Hite, Sh., The Hite Report on Male Sexuality. New York: Ballantine, 1981, p. 360. [Author’s reference]
[76] Sutor, J. (Docteur Jacobus X.), The Erogenous Zones of the World, by a French Army Surgeon. New York: Book Awards, 1964, p. 297. [Author’s reference]
[77] Beurdeley, C., Beau petit ami. Fribourg: Office du Livre, 1977, p. 214. [Author’s reference]
[78] Burkhardt, C. A. H., Goethes Unterhaltungen mit dem Kanzler Friedrich von Müller. Stuttgart: Cotta, 1870, p. 138. [Author’s reference]
[79] Churchill 1968, 85-86 [Author’s reference]. Presumably a mistake for “Churchill, W., Homosexual Behavior Among Males. New York: Hawthorn, 1967“, the only book by a Churchill in his bibliography.
[80] Schlegel, W. S., Über die Ursachen homosexuellen Verhaltens. In: Schlegel (Ed.), Das grosse Tabu. München: Rütten & Loening, 1967, pp. 154-155. [Author’s reference]
[81] West, D., Homosexuality Re-Examined. London: Duckworth, 1977, pp. 115-117. [Author’s reference]
[82] Borneman, E., Lexikon der Liebe. Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978, p. 584 ; Buffière, F., Eros adolescent–La pédérastie dans la Grèce antique. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1980, pp. 433, 518-520 ; Celli, G., L’omosessualità negli animali. Milano: Longanesi, 1972 ; Ford, C. S. & Beach, F. A., Formen der Sexualität. Berlin: Rowohlt, 1968, pp. 144-146, 149, 276; Gide, A., Corydon. Paris: Gallimard, 1925, pp. 72-75 ; Morris, D., The Human Zoo. New York: Dell, 1976, p. 84; Schérer, R., Emile perverti. Paris: Laffont, 1974, p. 189. [Author’s references]
[83] West, D., Treatment in Theory and Practice. Points from the Discussion. In: West (Ed.), Sex Offenders in the Criminal Justice System. Cambridge: Institute of Criminology, 1980, p. 117. [Author’s reference]
[84] Peyrefitte, R., La jeunesse d’Alexandre. Paris: Albin Michel, 1977, pp. 53, 62 [Author’s reference]. It is not really striking at all once it is remembered that the Greeks drew a sharp distinction between boys and men and had a strong concept of paiderasteia, but no concept at all of so-called “girl-love” as distinct from love of women. The ages of the females who attracted the gods are not usually given, but it is a fair assumption that they were imagined as the same sort of age as that at which Greek girls usually married, ie. their early teens. The famous Helen is variously stated to have been seven, ten or of just child-bearing age when she was abducted by the divine hero Theseus. [Website footnote].
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