HISTORY AND ETHNOLOGY OF BOY-LOVE
BY EDWARD BRONGERSMA
“History and Ethnology of Boy-Love” is the third part of “Man/Boy Relationships”, the third 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.
The citizens of Classical Greece had no difficulty understanding this. They disliked homosexuality, which they considered unaesthetic, for to them the hairy body of the adult male was ugly.[1] The smooth boy’s body, however, with its graceful curves was likened to that of a woman.[2] The philosopher Theodoros of Kyrene affirmed: “A woman and a boy are equally beautiful. Why do they possess this beauty? To provide men with sexual pleasure.”[3] Nevertheless it was the budding virility which especially attracted Greek men: effeminate boys did not appeal to them; vigour, endurance, youthful ardour did. Physical exercise, gymnastics, running and hunting were encouraged. Young grace had to be grounded in muscular strength.[4]
The beauty of boys was an important subject of discussion. Plutarch describes the joy of looking at their bodies and, according to Aristotle, only someone who had been born blind could ask why one would love boys. Athenaios wrote that many men prefer boys as sexual partners to women.[5] This is echoed in poetry and in the famous vase paintings of the time, where boys honoured with the adjective “kalos” (beautiful) appear twice as frequently as girls.[6] Often we see the bearded suitor caressing the chin of a boy, an artistic shorthand indicative of love.[7] In religion this was also apparent. Buffière[8] observes, “Eros is the god of male passion for boys, Aphrodite the goddess of male-female intercourse. Eros involves affection, Aphrodite the sensations of the flesh; Eros is spiritual, Aphrodite carnal; Eros brings happiness, Aphrodite pleasure. He who is inspired by Eros seeks the well-being of the beloved; he who is inspired by Aphrodite seeks procreation.” Meleagros taught that Aphrodite was defeated by her son Eros: he was the stronger of the two.[9] Plato was likewise cognizant of his power. His philosophy championed the equality of the sexes, but all pedagogical love was reserved for boys: nowhere do girls come into the picture.[10] Although he taught that the genitals should only be employed for procreation, he showed great understanding of the lover who used them with boys as well.
Thus the “normal” Greek wasn’t at all hesitant to admit to his sexual activity with boys. Sexual intercourse was considered a natural activity which one shouldn’t be ashamed of, and this applied as well to sex with a boy.[11] In his famous speech, Aischines violently attacked his political opponent Timarchos for his dissipated, immoral style of living; he did not, however, try to deny that he himself loved boys.[12] The sexual aspect of boy-love was perfectly honourable.[13] Socrates asked the Sicilian manager of a very handsome young cither-player performing in a festival whether he slept with the boy. The man replied calmly, “Oh, yes. Every night, and the whole night through.” The sculptor Phidias engraved in the thumb of his gigantic statue of Zeus in Olympia a dedication of love to his young friend: “Pantarkes is beautiful.[14] Here, in the facade of the Temple of Zeus, one could gaze at a group sculpture in which a satyr was introducing his phallus into a boy’s bottom.[15] Gods and demi-gods were setting the example.[16] Young Heracles was asked to choose between Sensuality and Virtue. Sensuality promised him “boys with whom he would like to have sex”. Heracles chose Virtue, but this didn’t prevent him subsequently from having affairs with twenty-four lover-boys. Not only was his muscle-power enormous, so was his many-sided sexual potency: as well as loving boys he deflowered the forty-nine daughters of King Thespius in one and the same night.[17]
On the island of Thera (Santorini), in the area where the temples stood, religious invocations were engraved in the rocks. Some dealt with the sexual initiation of boys: for example “Krimon fucked here a boy, the brother of Bathykles.[18] The attempt of Dover[19], the well-known British authority on Ancient Greece, to explain this as boasting, slander or insult, isn’t very convincing.[20] Passive anal intercourse was only improper for an adult man, not for the adolescent boy.
The beloved boy was called paidika, which literally means “boyishness”[21], for it was this that was loved in him: the quality of being pais, a boy. A modern author, Jacques de Brethmas, sharing the same feeling, put it well: “The most important quality in a boy for me is his boyishness. I desire a real boy, very manly and very natural.”[22]
A young male was considered a pais until he was 19 or 20 years old, or as long as his body remained smooth and he was beardless. In their boy-friends, men found and loved this vision of the paidika. Or, as the French novelist Saint-Ours put it so nicely, “This vision always carries the name of the boy, into whose body I insert my member.[23]
For the Greeks, paidika and girls were among the common joys of life – the paidika perhaps even more so than girls. From the social point of view, boy-love was more important than heterosexuality; sheer sexual delight was found with boys, not with women.[24] By comparison, married intercourse was rather a duty to the commonwealth. Thus only married men were allowed to assist at the gymnopaideia, ritual dances preformed by naked boys.[25] Boy-love didn’t need any explication to the Athenian: its niceness was self-evident.[26] If a sleeping man had a wet dream he was supposed to have dreamed of a paidika.[27] In Megara boys held kissing competitions, in Elis beauty contests and, as Dover rightly observes, to admire physical beauty, whether we like it or not, was and remains a sexual act.[28] The Greeks were highly susceptible to this veneration of beauty, and not the least bit timid about nudity. The male genitals were exhibited without shame. At the Olympic games of 715 BC the victor Orsippos of Megara lost his loincloth during the race,[29] and from then on official rules obliged the athletes to perform stark naked. Peyrefitte, a profound student of this period, writes that the public would comment on the size of the competitors’ genitals and often gave the athletes nicknames inspired by the configuration of their members.[30] Images on vases and plates often showed satyrs with gigantic erections[31] and in the streets of every city the way to bath-houses and brothels was pointed out by Hermes columns topped by a bearded bust of the messenger god and for the rest a quadrangular column smooth except for a male member in erection.
In this society youthful beauty was highly appreciated. Plutarch tells a revealing story. During a street fight in Sparta, Isodis, a big, handsome boy in the bloom of early adolescence, came running out of his home without taking time to put on his clothes and joined the battle with spear and sword. His naked beauty proved more of a protection than his shield, however, for no foe dared to maim such a fine body and he remained unharmed.[32]
The genitals were a part of the boy’s beauty. Aristophanes claimed that the superintendent who must inspect the young citizens takes a particular pleasure in looking at their genitals. And the poet Strato thought that Paris would have turned away from the three Graces if he could have compared them with the stiffened member of Diokles, the poet’s favourite.[33]
When a teacher got an erection during wrestling exercises with his pupils, the spectators were only amused.[34] It was commonly recognised everywhere that men needed sexual satisfaction and got it with boys. Xenophon refers to an official army regulation which allowed every soldier to take a boy with him.[35] Athens’ lawgiver Solon (640-558 BC) saw boy-love as a quite natural phenomenon.[36] He decreed, “You shall love boys in the charming bloom of life, desire their thighs and soft mouths. You shall love boys until fluffy hair covers their faces, love their sweet breath and thighs.”[37] Girls married at an average age of 15, young men only at 30, so it was natural that an opportunity be created for them to satisfy their sexual appetites. It was the intent of Solon’s laws to guarantee to all free boys of the city-state the liberty to decide for themselves whether or not they wanted to abandon their body to a free citizen. To adult male slaves, by contrast, active relations with a free boy were strictly forbidden. [38] To prevent them from occurring, parents sometimes had the slave to whom the education of their son was entrusted (the “pedagogue”) castrated. Likewise, the slave boy was entitled to no free choice; sexually he must always be at the disposal of his master, who could also order him to satisfy the lusts of his guests.[39]
On the whole, Athenian fathers were not very much in favour of sexual relations between their sons and adult men, and they tried to guard against them. In Elis, in Lakonta and Boeotia, where the Dorians were in power, it was, on the contrary, considered nice and morally good for a boy to give happiness to his lover.[40] When Telemachus, in his search for his father Ulysses, visits old Nestor in Elis, the king offers him his own son as a bed-companion, and Homer tells us that the boy fell in love with the noble guest and wanted to go with him on his journey.[41] On Crete tradition demanded that the lover abduct a boy forceably. This was a faked rape – faked because the family of the boy was informed in advance and, if the man was acceptable, their defence was only a comic pretence. During the next two months the boy accompanied the man everywhere, and they shared their pleasures. At the end of this period the man brought the boy back, presented him with armour, a coat of honour and an ox which the boy must sacrifice to Zeus. At the sacrificial ceremony the boy had to declare solemnly that the sexual intercourse had been to his taste. Now he was considered to have reached majority, had a seat of honour in the theatre and wore a coat of a special colour.[42]
Solon gave to his city brothels where girls served their clients, fearing that otherwise the Athenian youth would come to know only homosexual intercourse. Sparta’s lawgiver Lykurgus had quite different fears: he put a ban on female brothels in order to promote sex between males.[43] The obedient Spartan citizen had to use boys[44] and men were even punished for neglecting this obligation.[45] As soon as a boy was twelve a respectable young man was designated as his lover.[46]
Sex with boys also found its place in religion. In the sanctuary of Aphrodite on Mount Eryx (nowadays Erice) in Sicily boys served as prostitutes in the temple precincts. On Delphi every four years, at the opening of the Pythian Plays, naked boys danced in front of Apollo’s temple. This was the ceremony of the Gymnopaideia, the memory of which inspired the French composer Eric Satie (1866-1925) to write such wonderful music. It was followed by a ritual the original meaning of which became completely forgotten in the course of time: a boy, also stark naked, entered from one side, overturned one of the tables laden with food, set fire to a tent and ran away. Men chased and caught him, then whipped and raped him, just as people used to do with runaway slaves.[47]
As well as this sacral prostitution, there was, of course, in every city of Grecian and Roman antiquity, the secular variety. Emperor Augustus decreed that brothel boys should have an annual holiday on a fixed date.[48] The wealthy had their slaves. Soldiers who exhibited outstanding courage were often rewarded with the present of a boy.[49]
The Roman practice was profoundly different from the Greek in its absence of the pedagogic intent. Beautiful boys were a luxury, and as such they were bought or imported, especially from Egypt (Nubia). The Greeks wanted their beloved boys to distinguish themselves by good behaviour; the Romans liked them impudent, vulgar and provoking. There were exceptions, of course. The passion of Emperor Hadrian (117-138) for Antinous is well known, and there are tender boy-love passages in the writings of Catullus, Cicero, Horace, Martialis, Ovid and Tibulus.[50]
At all times, in every country, men have had sexual relations with boys. We will give some examples in what follows of free and institutional boy-love outside of Greece. But it is important to point out already here that this “Greek love” and all other similar expressions are quite far removed from the relationships of lust and love to which this book is dedicated. For wherever sex with boys is a cultural tradition in which “normal” males also participate, we do not find men and boys uniting in mutual lust; it is rather a situation where the man is bent on attaining his own satisfaction, and for this he uses the body of the boy – or it is a practice believed necessary for the boy’s development. Most commonly the corporal union is modelled on heterosexual intercourse: the man is expected to insert his member in the boy’s anus or to move it between the boy’s thighs. What the man gives in exchange to the boy – at least to the free-born boy – may be considerable: care, affection, education, an example of virility and virtue, physical exercises and character training – and all of this to such a high degree that we find the Greek philosophers tempted to regard boy-love rather as the privilege of distinguished and virtuous citizens. Lukianos says, “Marriage is for everyone; to love a boy is reserved for the sage,”[51] for it demands more character and sacrifice than the average citizen is capable of giving. In his treatise Menschliches allzu Menschliches, Nietzche stated that probably in no time in human history were boys treated with so much affection, love and careful consideration for their well-being as then, but this doesn’t alter the fact that a sexual activity which repays a man his devotion remains a one-sided affair: what to the man is a satisfaction of lust is a sacrifice on the part of the boy. Classical Greek love, then, was characterized by three things: 1) it was a relationship between an adult and a boy; 2) the sexual activity was never mutual – the man had to be the active partner; 3) the practice was justified by its educational intent.[52] For this reason Ovid, an avowed expert on love-making, rejected it: “I don’t like a copulation which doesn’t bring both partners to orgasm.”[53]
For slaves the situation was much worse. Rich Roman fathers provided their adolescent sons with a handsome servant upon whom they could exercise their sexual powers and satisfy their lusts. In one marriage song, the festive companions sing quite openly about how the bride insisted on the slave-boy being deprived of his beautiful long hair and sent to work in the fields; thenceforth the groom would have to devote this potency to her womb.[54] We are reminded of Hans Blüher’s opinion that even today many men are trained through boy-love to be good hetero- or homosexual lovers.[55]
The Greeks and Romans disapproved of a man who indulged in practices with his boyfriend other than active anal and intercrural (between the thighs) intercourse.[56] Greek vase paintings often show the man touching the genitals of a boy, but the boy never has an erection: it was just a solicitation by caressing, and never went beyond that.[57] A man masturbating a boy to orgasm received a lecture for such abuse[58], and it was far beneath male dignity to suck a boy’s penis.[59]
Of course, in those times there were also paedophiles for whom the pleasure of a boy was indispensable. But if this came to light they were derided and despised. Martialis sneered at one man who left the door and curtains of his room open while inserting his penis into a boy’s bottom. Whoever likes to be observed in such an act, the poet maliciously observed, will certainly behave in a thoroughly scandalous way behind closed doors.[60]
A similar situation prevails wherever sex with boys is unexceptional, belongs to the customs and manners of society. For example, the Etruscans, before the rise of Rome the most powerful nation on the Apennine Peninsula, used to be served by stark naked boys at their banquets. When the guests had partaken to their full of food and drink, the young servants laid themselves down at the side of the men who then, quite without shame, took their public pleasure with them until everyone was quite exhausted. Then strong young slaves were summoned, kitchen boys, sedan carriers, athletes to perform “live shows” for the spectators and unite themselves with the servant boys.[61] In later years the Roman Emperor Domitian similarly provided the guests he invited to his banquets with a boy.[62]
The Germanic tribes celebrated marriages between men and boys. The Gauls used their wives only for procreation, sleeping at other times with their young companions. Prostitution was considered a meretricious occupation for boys. The Gauls liked slender bodies: if a boy grew too fat he was punished.[63] Among the Celts sex with boys was frequent.[64] The hardy Norsemen also took young boys under their wings to nurture and train in the warrior arts – and to use as bed-partners.[65]
Christendom was not able to abolish boy-love immediately. Johannes Chrysostomos (340-407) complained bitterly about people only going to church to stare at handsome boys.[66] A well-known bishop in the XIth Century openly confessed having shared his bed with both sexes.[67]
This continued into the Middle Ages. About the year 1000 it was “the most wide-spread vice in all classes of society, among princes as well as serfs, among bishops as well as monks.[68] An anonymous Ninth Century poem postulates that the inhabitants of Orleans preferred boys. Archbishop Baldricus of Dol (1046-1130) wrote love poems celebrating boys as often as girls. Abérard’s famous pupil Hilarius of Poitiers (about 1125) consecrated some very sensual poems to boys, affirming that he would like to have sex with them. In the Thirteenth Century a bishop in the south of France actually absolved himself of sin whenever he wanted to go to bed with a boy or girl. A sect of evangelists pressured young boys to submit to sodomy.[69] And in 1303 Fra Giordano da Rivalto lamented the practice of fathers selling their comely sons to wealthy boy-lovers in the hopes of assuring for them a prosperous future.[70] Certain medical writers recommended sexual intercourse with a boy (“usus et amplexus pueri”) as beneficial for good health.[71] This belief persisted even into the 17th Century, when William of Orange (later King William III of England) received from his physicians the suggestion “that he sleep with one of his pages in order to absorb some ‘animal spirits’ from a healthy body. Since the patient was known to enjoy sleeping with his pages, the prescription was easily followed.[72]
During the Renaissance, awakened interest in classical antiquity gave renewed impetus to boy-love. In Venice, boy-love became so common that prostitutes were ordered to sit at their windows with their breasts exposed in order to tempt men away from using boys.[73] In Florence there was Savonarola “thundering from the pulpit against that unspeakable and abominable sin, the love of beardless boys.” At his execution in 1498, “a member of the governing body of the city is said to have announced with sardonic satisfaction to his colleagues, ‘and now we can practice sodomy again’.”[74] The poet Ariosto (1474-1533) claimed that all men in all parts of Europe indulged in boy-love and that nobody lived a completely heterosexual life.[75] Michelangelo, on the contrary, maintained in a poem to his favourite Tommaso Cavalieri that boy-love was for connoisseurs only and wasn’t suitable for ordinary people.[76] This same Michelangelo had a father bring him his son, asking the great painter to accept the boy as his pupil and explicitly insisting that he should sleep with the lad, so the boy should love and obey him the better.[77] Caravaggio (1573-1610) no longer made angels out of his young models. “No hint of idealizing softens their sex appeal; they openly proposition the spectator.[78]
Shakespeare’s famous contemporary, Christopher Marlowe, declared “all they that love not tobacco and boyes are fools.[79] In the Sixteenth Century boy-love and girl-love were put on equal terms.[80] “Pornographic literature and scandal-mongering accounts of the behaviour of particular groups (particularly the nobility, priests and nuns) suggest that semi-covert flouting of the official rules was always fairly common, even when the penalties for exposure were extraordinarily severe. The facetious treatment of the topic in the theatre suggests that pederasty, though officially a high crime, was always a commonplace vice and to ordinary people a subject of derision more than horror.”[81]
In 1671 Liselotte van der Pfalz reported from Paris that in the whole royal court she could not find six men who didn’t love young males. Some had sex with boys of ten and eleven, but the majority preferred bigger boys and adolescents.[82] The habit became more and more accepted, and in 1738 someone observed that there was no more secrecy about making love with a boy than with a woman.[83]
Even today there are places where sex with boys is very much in the air. In the United States, Baltimore had this reputation. Tom Reeves reported in 1978 that in a certain section of the city 50% to 70% of the teenagers had sexual relations with men and that nearly as many men had intercourse with boys. This situation had prevailed for 75, perhaps 100 years. The boys also had sex with girls; afterwards they married, fathered children – and often satisfied themselves in their turn with boys. Even the police joined in the game and allowed boys to have a ride in their patrol cars in exchange for sex.
Mr. Helmuth A. Lill (Weidenstetten, Germany) who lived many years in Albania has kindly furnished me with particulars about marriage ceremonies in that country between Greek Orthodox men and boys. They still take place today – but rarely and in secret, for they are illegal. In addition, Mr. Lill provided me with extensive private documentation of a custom at one time widespread but nowadays practiced only in the region bounded on the south by the lake of Ochrid and on the north by the Metohijo at the Montenegran border with Yugoslavia. This is the so called gjanelidhja (seed alliance). An adult reserves for himself, after conferring with the parents, a child as sexual partner – either a boy or a girl, no distinction being made. The child associates only with this particular man until the time he or she is fully mature. A Gjanelidgia is taken very seriously and respected by everybody. The adult is considered to have become a member of the child’s family and is responsible for its food and clothes. For this alliance to be valid it is considered mandatory that the girl or boy suck the man’s penis and wholly swallow his seed (gjane) – and this fact must be confirmed by witnesses. Von Hahn[84] gives a less favourable picture of boy-love in Albania. Adolescents at sixteen start to have steady relations with boys of twelve and older. Their union is blessed by the priests in church, both partners receiving the Eucharist.[85]
All major cultures furnish examples of this kind of intimate relationship. The only exception seems to be ancient Egypt, where boy-love was generally condemned, yet even here there is conflicting evidence.[86] In pre-Hispanic Guatemala the Spanish conquistadores stated that “it was customary for fathers to provide their adolescent sons with a boy whom they could keep and use as a wife.[87]
Many tales in The Thousand Nights and a Night, in verses of Abu Nowas, El-Tifachi and other well-known poets show how greatly boy-love was part of Arab culture. El-Tifachi describes a night of passionate love when he shared his bed with a boy and a slave girl. He claimed he preferred the boy: “He is a better comrade, in the company of others he is more entertaining, and when you’re alone with him he is like a lawful wife.[88] Abu Nowas was of exactly the same opinion; just as in Ancient Greece and Rome, one and the same man used now a boy and then a girl.[89] Abu Nowas thinks of his beloved boy and has a wet dream.[90] Many battles against the Christian infidels were only fought to capture the handsome white slave-boys for whom there was a special market in Constantinople. Under Osman rule such favourite Greek, Serbian, Bulgarian and Hungarian boys, circumcised and forcibly converted to Islam, could rise to the highest official positions.[91] The Koran, it is true, forbids this kind of sex (VII, 81; XXVII, 55), but on the other hand it holds out to the faithful the prospect of being served in paradise by beautiful youths whose bloom never withers, and this can be interpreted to mean that sex with boys on earth is only an illegal advance on the bliss of beatitude.
A study of contemporary youth in Morocco shows that the active role in anal intercourse is, from the moral standpoint, only slightly objectionable. The passive role is unacceptable if a third party might come to know about it; kept strictly secret, it is a different matter.[92]
Information about the culture of India seems to be limited. Homosexuality is said not to be prevalent. But this is sharply contested by de Becker[93], and Sutor[94], working there as a physician, found boy-love rather common. Dr. Rustan J. Mehta, a citizen of the country itself, writes: “Male prostitution together with sodomy and pederasty is very common here in India. Special brothels are to be found in all the big cities; but sodomitical practices are popular even among the primitive native races.”[95]
The major treatise on sexual practices, the famous Kamasutra of Vatsayayana, observes only that males who are too fat, whose sexual appetite is extinguished and who aren’t excited by women, have their members sucked by nicely adorned slave boys who are very proficient in this act.[96] De Becker observes that in India there are no moral, social or familial objections against homosexual practices, and that there is a tendency to prefer oral activities to anal activities. Krishna Gopal, an anthropologist in Bombay gave this assessment: “Masculine and sexually active men are always, actively looking out for feminine, slender young men and boys. Boys and feminine men preferably choose older friends. The men of Northern India and Afghanistan, known for their extraordinarily strong sex drive, are very passionate, but also jealous and nearly always prefer young boys.[97]
In pre-revolutionary China, boy-love was prevalent everywhere. It had a long tradition.[98] All towns had their boy-brothels. A visit to them was a very common occurrence. If a stranger asked someone in the street for the way to the nearest brothel, it was pointed out to him with the utmost courtesy.[99] In 1860 a city like Tientsin counted no less than 35 brothels where boys from 8 to 17 years of age were offered to clients. Boy-love was systematically cultivated, formally organized, developed to a high degree and was common at all social levels. Distinguished Chinese citizens weren’t embarrassed to show themselves publicly in the company of their favourites, and high government officials didn’t hesitate to confess openly that they loved boys.[100]
A French missionary was completely bewildered when, in 1780, he observed “that the Japanese man unites this tendency with the love of women” and that monks, on whom celibacy was imposed, “had a curious way to compensate themselves for this constraint”. Those who loved boys and adolescents enjoyed the reputation of being more virile; only weaker men preferred women. Adultery incurred capital punishment but homosexuality was perfectly legal for young men. From the time of the Middle Ages and right up until the Eighteenth Century, rural inns used to provide travellers with a boy they could “refresh” themselves with, i.e. suck out their seed. In the beginning of the Seventeenth Century a Shogun (commander-in-chief) declared that the services of boy prostitutes were indispensable. The distinguished author Ibara Saikwaku (1642-1693) wrote The Big Mirror of Boy-Love which championed and idealised relations between the Samurai knights and their pages. The German ethnologist Karsch-Haack, source of these particulars, wrote in 1906 that he had been told by an eye-witness: “Even today pederasty is widespread in the Japanese army and navy as an inheritance from the Samurai, and it played an important role in their victory, which surprised the whole world, in the recent war with Russia.”[101] An American living in Japan told me in 1970 that parents are pleased when their son has physical intimacy with his teacher, and that on school excursions the boys draw lots to determine which of them may sleep with him.
Patzer[102] lists a great many cultures in which boy-love is socially acceptable. Attention was first called to the prevalence of boy-love in all parts of the world among peoples who live close to nature by Karsch-Haack in his The Homosexual Life of Primitive Peoples (1911)[103], a standard work on the subject which has still to be superseded. Later his findings were confirmed by the Americans Ford and Beach.[104] Here we can give only a few of the more striking examples.
First of all, however, a distinction should be made between two quite dissimilar institutions. In the first, shamanism, the boy is devirilised, turned into a woman, in which role he thenceforth lives, highly honoured and performing various religious functions. In the second, on the other hand, boy-love is seen as a virilising force: it is considered indispensable for a boy to ingest the seed of an adult man in order to grow up big and strong.
An example of the first, shamanistic practice we find in a report on the Pueblo Indians in California dating from 1850. Every year one of the handsomest and strongest boys was selected to become a mujerado (womanized male). Every day he was masturbated for hours on end, and during the same period made to mount a horse bareback so that his testicles were continuously squeezed. Thus his genitals were kept in a constant state of irritation. In the beginning sperm and slime constantly dripped from them, but finally the glands and penis shrivelled. After thus being rendered impotent, the youth adopted feminine dress and performed feminine tasks. He was held in great respect: during the spring religious sex orgies all men had sexual relations with him; during rest of the year this privilege was restricted to the tribal chiefs.[105] The same is told of the Majave and Illinois Indians.[106]
Religious rituals in which boys serve as temple prostitutes also occur in the African Hereros.[107] The practice of bringing up some selected boys as girls, according to Borneman, flourishes in “innumerable cultures”[108] – for example, among Indians in Canada, Wyoming and Montana, in Kamchatka and among the Tatares in the USSR, where the Soviet administration wasn’t able to put an end to it.[109]
The second sort of practice is for us the easiest to understand: its basic premise is that the boy needs sex, especially the consumption of male sperm, in order to become a real man.
It is shared by many primitive tribes in New Guinea. With the Marind, every adolescent residing in the tribal lodge for youths gets a “godfather”, usually a married man. At night the two lie together side-by-side and at any hour the boy must be available for sexual intercourse. During religious ceremonies these steady relations are suspended and replaced by a general sexual freedom between men and boys.[110] With the Marind, homosexuality is actually more common than heterosexuality.[111] In some tribes the seed which the boy needs is anally ingested; this is so with the inhabitants of the island of Kiwai and the Keraki of the mainland. For a year after the period of his initiation, the boy is subjected to anal intercourse. From then on until he marries, he, in turn, has to be the active partner in anal intercourse with younger boys.[112] In other New Guinea tribes the seed must be swallowed. This is the case with the Kukukuku of the interior and the Etoke, probably identical with the natives described by Herdt in his magnificent study Guardians of the Flute. (He gives them the fictive name “Sambia” in order to keep secret their exact location.) Starting at eight or ten years of age, and continuing until they are about fifteen, boys must every night suck the penis of the older adolescents and young men (in the 15-25-year bracket) who haven’t completed their initiation process, and swallow their seed. At first they tend to dislike doing this, but soon they come to enjoy it. Special friendships and personal preferences arise through the relations and continue over many years. For the older partner this is officially considered a sacrifice, a duty, for a male is thought to receive only a limited amount of sperm at puberty which can never be replenished and will ultimately be exhausted.[113]
Boys of the Big Namba culture of the New Hebrides are subjected to extremely painful initiation ceremonies. The boy then chooses an adult friend as his nilagh sen. The man thereby obtains absolute authority over the boy, is allowed to use him sexually and sell him for this purpose to other men, but only for short periods. As a result of this convention, every chief has a number of boys at his disposal – and often has little to do with his married wife anymore. The anal intercourse the boy experiences and which, in contrast to heterosexual intercourse, must be performed standing, is thought to enlarge and strengthen his penis. Thus the father, at the end of the initiation rituals, presents a gift to the nilagh sen. The relationship between the boy and his nilagh sen is very close. They are always together, and if one of them dies the other will mourn him deeply.[114] The other men with whom the boy has sex give him some precious gifts, which he then transmits to his nilagh sen.[115] “Among the Marquesans men have sex with boys because they think boys are ‘soft and girlish’.”[116]
In former times the Australian Aborigines used to perform an extremely painful operation on the male member during the course of puberty rites. In Chapter Three a more detailed description of this will be given, but here we should note that it is the future father-in-law who performs the operation, and for a certain time afterwards he is entitled to use the boy sexually.[117]
With the Aranda in central Australia, a young man, following his initiation, chooses a 10-12-year-old boy to share his life with him for several years and serve him as a woman until he marries.[118] In Western Australia there are formal marriages between men and boys.[119] In East Bay “a father will put his seven- or eight-year-old son sexually at the disposal of a friend; the child has to obey and his consent is not asked. He will, however, get some little gift.”[120]
When the Batak boys in Sumatra (Indonesia) reach puberty they leave their parents and dwell in a bachelor’s lodge until they marry. Here the older adolescents masturbate them and have anal intercourse with them. Oral intercourse is strictly taboo. After his wedding night a groom is bound to return to his former comrades and tell them in great detail all about his sexual intercourse with his wife in order to give them a clear picture of what lies in store for them later.[121]
One Peter M. Ladiges spoke about his travels in Afghanistan on a German radio programme in 1980. Gay Journal (September, 1980) gave a summary of his talk: “Homosexuality is common and is found to be a solution everywhere. Moving to the summer pastures the herdsman never takes his own son along with him but the son of one of his friends. This boy is his apprentice, serves him and gets instruction from him about things a good nomad has to know. These male relationships are carried on through life, even though the two will see each other less frequently after the boy marries. About the Chuckchee in Northern Siberia it is reported that sex with boys is considered normal and in no way kept secret. Young, handsome boys adorn themselves and flirt openly with their admirers. This is all the more striking because nothing impedes sex with girls and the boys themselves start to have heterosexual intercourse from ten years on.[122]
Among the Eskimos of Greenland, man/boy marriages are also traditional.[123]
Magnificently illustrated volumes made the Western world familiar with the Nuba tribe in Sudan, their beautiful body-painting and their favourite sport – the ferocious gang boxing fights of the muscular warriors. In this tribe of strong, virile people, boys and men customarily go about naked; only the sick and the old cover their bodies with clothes. The men have sexual intercourse with the boys and “marry” them.[124]
Patzer mentions man/boy marriages in Algeria[125], Italiaander[126] among the Bantu tribes. In some societies like the Nyakyusa, young males are sexual objects for other young males; in others like the Azande the elite have boy wives. The boys, accustomed to exclusive homosexuality, graduate to “husband” roles when they are older and themselves take “boy wives” from a new generation.[127] In the Egyptian Siwa Oasis near the Libyan border, already mentioned in the first chapter, all men have anal intercourse with boys; if one doesn’t follow this practice he is considered very peculiar. A father marries his adolescent son to one of his friends, who then has complete control of the boy. He may prohibit the boy from having sex with others but may also lend him out for sexual purposes. The people are convinced that a boy will not grow up properly if he isn’t regularly used by a man. This will also enlarge and strengthen his penis.[128] Until 1926 such man/boy marriages were even legally recognised.[129] Edwardes & Masters[130] reported that the government had by then declared them illegal but that the traditional ceremonies nevertheless still take place. After circumcision the boys enter the league of Ez-Zeggaleh (The Beserks). “During a Zegl, or orgy, the men and the boys strip each other naked and, inflamed by stimulants, attack one another passionately. Having effected anal penetration, the active partner rotates his penis as energetically as possible; at the same time he masturbates his passive lover (…) Each partner assumes an alternately active and passive role. The same pederastic pattern may be found throughout the oases of Libya and Egypt, in the Sudan, and along the old slave routes to Timbuktu.”
Tobias Scheebaum[131] lived like a native with a naked tribe of Indians in the Peruvian rain forest. He tells how affectionate and intimate men and boys were there to each other, and how these close relationships as a matter of course found their expression in sex.
Summing up, we may conclude that men having sex with boys is an omnipresent human phenomenon. The motives may differ: sometimes it is done to facilitate education and strengthen character, sometimes to reinforce the boy’s sexual potency, or to strengthen and develop his body; sometimes simply to satisfy a man’s lust. Thus it has been, in all nations and in all ages. Goethe was right in saying that boy-love is part of the nature of man. Only the ignorant could call it unnatural or deviant.
In so saying we voice no opinion about its morality or immorality. Moral kindness as well as immoral cruelty are present everywhere in mankind; each is as integral a part of human nature as boy-love. Its morality or immorality has nothing to do with its frequency; it depends entirely upon the good it brings to boy and man or the harm it inflicts upon them. These are problems we will take up in the second volume of this work.
Continue to Boy-Lovers in Relation to Women
[1] Patzer, H., Die griechische Knabenliebe. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1982, p. 61. [Author’s reference]
[2] Buffière, F., Eros adolescent – La pédérastie dans la Grèce antique. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1980, p. 7 ; Patzer, H., Die griechische Knabenliebe. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1982, p. 59. [Author’s reference]
[3] Buffière, F., Eros adolescent–La pédérastie dans la Grèce antique. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1980, p. 480. [Author’s reference]
[4] Foucault, M., L’usage des plaisirs. Paris: Gallimard, 1984, 221. [Author’s reference]
[5] Buffière, F., Eros adolescent – La pédérastie dans la Grèce antique. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1980, pp. 131, 261, 309. [Author’s reference]
[6] Dover. K. J., Greek Homosexuality. London: Duckworth, 1978, 9; Marcadé, J., Eros kalos. Genève: Nagel, 1965. [Author’s reference]
[7] Steinberg, L., The Metaphores of Love and Birth in Michelangelo’s Pietàs. In: Bowie et al, Studies in Erotic Art. New York: Basic Books, 1970, p. 281. [Author’s reference]
[8] Buffière, F., Eros adolescent – La pédérastie dans la Grèce antique. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1980, pp. 331-332. [Author’s reference]
[9] Dover. K. J., Greek Homosexuality. London: Duckworth, 1978, p. 63. [Author’s reference]
[10] Buffière, F., Eros adolescent – La pédérastie dans la Grèce antique. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1980, pp. 333, 413-415, 637. [Author’s reference]
[11] Ungaretti, J. R., De-moralizing Morality: Where Dover’s “Greek Homosexuality” Leaves Us. Journal of Homosexuality, 8, 1, 1-17, 1982, p. 10. [Author’s reference]
[12] Dover. K. J., Greek Homosexuality. London: Duckworth, 1978, p. 92. [Author’s reference]
[13] Patzer, H., Die griechische Knabenliebe. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1982, p. 56. [Author’s reference]
[14] Buffière, F., Eros adolescent – La pédérastie dans la Grèce antique. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1980, p. 154. [Author’s reference]
[15] Peyrefitte, R., La jeunesse d’Alexandre. Paris: Albin Michel, 1977, p. 25 [Author’s reference]. This is yet another example of Brongersma showing his unreliability as a recorder of history, making a typically sensational claim and citing a mere novel as his authority for it. It is doubtful at best: by far the most detailed description of the Temple of Zeus is in Pausanias’s Description of Greece, V 10-14; this mentions a statue of a centaur seizing a boy in his prime, but no satyr and no one in a boy’s bottom. [Website footnote]
[16] Borneman, E., Lexikon der Liebe. Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978, p. 602 {Author’s reference]. Borneman was neither a historian nor an ancient, so it was worthless to cite him. [Website footnote]
[17] Borneman, E., Lexikon der Liebe. Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978, p. 691; Peyrefitte, R., La jeunesse d’Alexandre. Paris: Albin Michel, 1977, p. 483 [Author’s references]. Again, Borneman was neither a historian nor an ancient, and though one could call Peyrefitte a classical scholar, his book cited was a mere novel. This time the information is happily correct though; the main source for Herakles’s boy-loves is Plutarch’s Erotikos 761. [Website footnote]
[18] Buffière, F., Eros adolescent – La pédérastie dans la Grèce antique. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1980, pp. 58-59; Moll, A., Handbuch der Sexualwissenschaften. Leipzig: Vogel, 1921, p. 385. [Author’s references]
[19] Dover. K. J., Greek Homosexuality. London: Duckworth, 1978, p. 123 [Author’s reference]. Dover did not doubt that Krimon fucked Bathykles’s brother; he merely observed that the tone of this and similar declarations was so blunt that they “should not be regarded as solemn declarations of sanctified erotic relationships.” [Website footnote]
[20] Edward Brongersma, in P.A.N. No. 15, 1983, pp. 27-28; Patzer, H., Die griechische Knabenliebe. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1982, pp. 84-87. [Author’s references]
[21] Buffière, F., Eros adolescent–La pédérastie dans la Grèce antique. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1980, 605. Dover. K. J., Greek Homosexuality. London: Duckworth, 1978, p. 64. [Author’s reference]
[22] Brethmas, J. de, Traité de chasse au minet. Paris: Perchoir, 1979, p. 66. [Author’s reference]
[23] Saint Ours, Un ange à Sodome. Paris: Authier, 1973, p. 41. [Author’s reference]
[24] Borneman, E., Lexikon der Liebe. Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978, pp. 12, 607. [Author’s reference]
[25] Borneman, E., Lexikon der Liebe. Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978, p. 210 [Author’s reference]. Is this true? It is hard to be sure with Brongersma here continuing to cite a modern writer with no credentials as a historian, instead of a primary source. [Website footnote]
[26] Bethe, E., Die dorische Knabenliebe, ihre Ethik und ihre Idee. Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, neue Folge 62, 1907, p. 442. [Author’s reference]
[27] Dover. K. J., Greek Homosexuality. London: Duckworth, 1978, p. 65 [Author’s reference]. Typically, this is an exaggeration rather than an outright invention. Dover merely cited primary sources which recounted men having wet dreams due to thoughts of boys; neither he nor his sources ever said it was assumed that a boy must the cause. [Website footnote]
[28] Dover. K. J., Greek Homosexuality. London: Duckworth, 1978, p. 181. [Author’s reference]. Dover did not, however, mention the boys’ kissing competition at Megara, for which the primary source is Theokritos, Idyll XII 30-31. [Website footnote]
[29] Actually, 720 BC. The primary source is Pausanias, Description of Greece I 44 i. [Website footnote]
[30] Peyrefitte was indeed ”a profound student of this period”, but, unfortunately for the truth, he shared Brongersma’s taste for sensationalising it. It would be fascinating to know his source for these claims (if he had one). [Website footnote]
[31] Indeed, but that is because they were satyrs, not men to be venerated. Their images of idealised men make it clear that the ancient Greeks did not admire large genitalia. It is hard to escape the suspicion that Brongersma is here pandering to how modern homosexuals would like the Greeks to have thought. [Website footnote]
[32] Buffière, F., Eros adolescent–La pédérastie dans la Grèce antique. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1980, p. 84 [Author’s reference]. The boy’s name was correctly Isidas and the ultimate source for the story is Plutarch, Life of Agesilaos XXXIV 6-8. [Website footnote]
[33] Buffière, F., Eros adolescent–La pédérastie dans la Grèce antique. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1980, p. 180. [Author’s reference]. The primary source is The Greek Anthology XII 207. [Website footnote]
[34] Peyrefitte, R., La jeunesse d’Alexandre. Paris: Albin Michel, 1977, pp. 308, 415 [Author’s reference: it is only to a work of fiction, but then the claim is hardly remarkable].
[35] If this is true, the source would be much appreciated. [Website footnote]
[36] Gide, A., Corydon. Paris: Gallimard, 1925, pp. 119-120. [Author’s reference]
[37] Eck, M., Homoseksualiteit. Antwerpen: Spectrum, 1969, p. 42 [Author’s reference]. For lack of reference to a primary source or a historical work, this must be regarded as being as dubious as it sounds sensational. [Website footnote]
[38] Brongersma gives no source for this, but a primary one is Plutarch, Dialogue on Love 4. [Website footnote]
[39] Buffière, F., Eros adolescent La pédérastie dans la Grèce antique. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1980, pp. 204, 244, 620-622; Peyrefitte, R., La jeunesse d’Alexandre. Paris: Albin Michel, 1977, pp. 551-552 [Author’s references]. The latter statement is obvious, while that about castration sounds sensational, so it would be good to know whether Brongersma’s source for it is Buffière (ie. serious) or Peyrefitte’s novel. [Website footnote]
[40] Bethe, E., Die dorische Knabenliebe, ihre Ethik und ihre Idee. Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, neue Folge 62, 438-475, 1907. [Author’s reference]
[41] Borneman, E., Lexikon der Liebe. Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978, p. 212. [Author’s reference] This is a classic example both of why one should be wary of Brongersma writing on history when the only source he gives is a modern non-historian, and of his (or his source’s) tendency under such circumstances to exaggerate the sexual implications. It is well-known that while some of what Homer describes could be open to a pederastic interpretation, none of it is nearly necessarily so. In this instance, from the Odyssey III 397-XV 215, all he says is that Nestor invited Telemachos to sleep in his palace, that he ordered Peisistratos, “who among his sons was still unwed in the palace“ to lie beside his guest, that Peistratos accompanied Telemachos to Sparta and that they subsequently parted as friends. Nothing is said about falling in love. Moreover, Homer is explicit that they were “the same age“. [Website footnote]
[42] Buffière, F., Eros adolescent–La pédérastie dans la Grèce antique. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1980, pp. 53-55, 623 [Author’s reference]. All true. The primary source is Strabon, Geography X 4 xxi-xxii. [Website footnote]
[43] Peyrefitte, R., La jeunesse d’Alexandre. Paris: Albin Michel, 1977, pp. 156, 656. [Author’s reference] The reference is only to a novel, and the claim looks fictitious. It is not at least mentioned in Plutarch’s life of Lykourgos, the source of almost everything known about him, though it is claimed there (IX 3) that there were no “keepers of harlots” due to Lykourgos’s banning of precious metals as money. [Website footnote]
[44] Borneman, E., Lexikon der Liebe. Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978, pp. 972, 977, 987. [Author’s reference]
[45] Patzer, H., Die griechische Knabenliebe. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1982, p. 89. [Author’s reference]. They were not punished for not “using” a boy. For accurate understanding, it is best to quote the primary source, Aelian’s Historical Miscellany III 10: “And any man of good appearance and character who did not fall in love with someone well-bred was also fined, because despite his excellence he did not love anyone. It was clear that he could have made his beloved […] similar to himself. » [Website footnote]
[46] Bremmer, J., An Enigmatic Indo-European Rite: Paederasty. Arethusa 13:2, 1980, 282. [Author’s reference] A distortion of this: “When the boys reached this age [12], they were favoured with the society of lovers from among the reputable young men“ (Plutarch, Lykourgos XVII 1). [Website footnote]
[47] Peyrefitte, R., La jeunesse d’Alexandre. Paris: Albin Michel, 1977, pp. 123, 527-528. [Author’s reference]. The “source” cited here is fiction, as the claim sounds. [Website footnote]
[48] Verstraete, B. C., Slavery and the Social Dynamics of Male Homosexual Relations in Ancient Rome. Journal of Homosexuality 5, 3: 1980, p. 231. [Author’s reference]
[49] Vilbert, J.-Cl., Les homosexuels et la chute de l’Empire Romain. Arcadie 26, 301: 1979, p. 127. [Author’s reference]
[50] Lever, M., Les bûchers de Sodome. Paris: Fayard, 1985, pp. 27-28, 32. [Author’s reference]
[51] Beurdeley, C., Beau petit ami. Fribourg: Office du Livre, 1977, p. 11. [Author’s reference]
[52] Patzer, H., Die griechische Knabenliebe. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1982, 105. Banens, M. De homo-aversie. Groningen: Historische Uitgeverij, 1981, p. 16. [Author’s reference] This is all true so far as outward appearances were concerned, but is Brongersma not being a little myopic here as to the differences that usually exist between outward conformity and private acts and motives? There were plenty of ancient writers showing awareness of the distinction. Greek boys were at least as capable of private motives of love and lust while ostensibly accepting lovers only for their education as were the many rent-boys in Brongersma’s day who claimed remuneration was their only motive. See Kenneth Dover, Greek Homosexuality (1978) 81-91 for a more sensitive and nuanced view. [Website footnote]
[53] Ovid, Ars Amatoria, II 683-684. Another Roman source, Petronius’s Satyricon 85-90 tells of a boy clearly getting pleasure and satisfaction from being pedicated. Presumably Ovid was unusually ignorant and unimaginative about sex with boys and never learned what was obvious to others in the active role: see The Greek Anthology XII 7, where Straton complains that sex with females is a comparative nuisance because “there’s no place where you can put your wandering hand.“ [Website footnote]
[54] Stoll, O., Das Geschlechtsleben in der Völkerpsychologie. Leipzig: Veit, 1908, pp. 189, 190 [Author’s reference]. This seems to be based on Catullus, Poems LXI, but it is distorted to give an exaggerated sense of how Roman sex was to do with power and selfish lust. Nothing was said about power(s) or the bride insisting on anything or the boy being sent to the fields. [Website footnote]
[55] Blüher, H., Die Rede des Aristophanes. Hamburg: Kala, 1966, p. 33. [Author’s reference]
[56] Patzer, H., Die griechische Knabenliebe. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1982, pp. 47, 96, 115. [Author’s reference]
[57] How can Brongersma or anyone else possibly know that? He is strangely insensitive to the gap for the ancients between what was considered decent to show in public and what went on in private, though the gap in other forms has existed in all ages and Brongersma shows an understanding of it when it comes to showing how decent 20th-century boy-lovers and their boys generally are. In this case, it does not seem to have occurred to him that ancient reticence over showing the boys’ excitement was for the boys’ sake: given their passive role, their pleasure must be hidden if their growing masculinity was not to be impugned. [Website footnote]
[58] Martialis XI, 22 [Author’s reference}. Martial’s objections were twofold and based on misuse rather than abuse. First, “the fingers make and precipitate manhood. Hence come the goat and rapid hairs and a beard.” Secondly, “Nature divided the male: one part was created for girls, one for men.” [Website footnote]
[59] In his eagerness to show that the Romans were morally inferior to modern pederasts, Brongersma has partly missed the point. It was not just that it was considered contemptible for Roman men to take the passive role, but, in common with many other peoples, Romans thought of fellatio as defiling the most sacred part of the body (see, for example, Cicero, Oratio post Reditum Senatui 11). Women who fellated were just as reviled. [Website footnote]
[60] Martialis XI, 62 [Author’s reference]. But how does this poem substantiate Brongersma’s claim that Roman “paedophiles” were derided if they were known to care about the pleasure of their boys? [Website footnote]
[61] Athenaios 517 I; Buffière, F., Eros adolescent – La pédérastie dans la Grèce antique. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1980, p. 35 ; Peyrefitte, R., Alexandre le Grand. Paris: Albin Michel, 1981, pp. 495-496 [Author’s references]. The first of these is the one that matters, being the primary source, and does indeed say what Brongersma reports. [Website footnote]
[62] Borneman, E., Lexikon der Liebe. Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978, p. 617 [Author’s reference]. Also true, expect that only one such banquet is known of; the primary source is Cassius Dio, Roman History LXVII 9 i-v. This episode formed the basis for a good erotic short story by classical scholarJ. Darling, “The Black Symposium”, in Panthology One edited by Frank Torey (Amsterdam, 1981) pp. 48-56. [Website footnote]
[63] Peyrefitte, R., La jeunesse d’Alexandre. Paris: Albin Michel, 1977, p. 681 [Author’s reference]. Brongersma’s source is fiction, but was based on a real primary source, namely Strabon’s Geography IV 4 vi [Website footnote]
[64] Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg, G., Tabu Homosexualität – Die Geschichte eines Vorurteils. Frankfurt: Fischer, 1978, pp. 34-35, 1980, p. 79; Gide, A., Corydon. Paris: Gallimard, 1925, p. 105. [Author’s references]
[65] Linedecker, C. L., Children in Chains. New York: Everest House, 1981, p. 106 [Author’s reference]. A disreputable source for a recently invented claim. [Website footnote]
[66] Bullough, V. L., Homosexuality – A History. New York: Garland, 1979, pp. 194, 331; Deschner, K., De kerk en haar kruis. Amsterdam: Arbeiderspers, 1978, p. 393. [Author’s references]
[67] Bullough, V. L., Sexual Variance In Society and History. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1976, p. 371 [Author’s reference].
[68] Chardans, J. L., History and Anthology of Homosexuality. Paris: Centre d’Etudes, 1970, pp. 128-129. [Author’s reference]
[69] Cleugh, J., Love Locked Out – A Survey of Love Licence and Restriction in the Middle Ages. 3. London: Blond, 1963, p. 92. [Author’s reference]
[70] Kuster, H. J., Over homoseksualiteit in middeleeuws West-Europa. Proefschrift Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht, 1977, pp. 42, 47, 52, 54, 55. [Author’s reference]
[71] Burton, R. F., Terminal Essay Upon the History of the Arabian Nights Entertainments. London: Burton Club, 1886, X 247. [Author’s reference]
[72] Haeberle, E. J., The Sex Atlas. New York: Seabury, 1978, p. 373. [Author’s reference] After a page of references to serious historians of the Middle Ages, Brongersma has here now reverted to silly secondary sources for silly claims. William III’s obvious fondness for handsome youths gave rise to suspicions of sodomy, for which there has never been anything approaching the evidence this would be if it were true. [Website footnote]
[73] Borneman, E., Lexikon der Liebe. Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978, p. 1145; Deschner, K., De kerk en haar kruis. Amsterdam: Arbeiderspers, 1978, pp. 405, 482. [Author’s reference]
[74] Walters, M., The Male Nude. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978, p. 112 [Author’s reference]. It was actually said in 1497 after an anti-Savanarolan riot (Simone Filipepi, Cronaca, in Scelta di prediche e scritte di fra Girolamo Savonarola, ed. P. Villari and E. Casanova (Florence, 1898), 507). [Website footnote]
[75] Williams 1967, 48 [Author’s reference, but there are no references to a book by a Williams published in 1967 in his bibliography].
[76] Buffière, F., Eros adolescent – La pédérastie dans la Grèce antique. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1980, p. 155. [Author’s reference]
[77] Beurdeley, C., Beau petit ami. Fribourg: Office du Livre, 1977, p. 82 [Author’s reference] This sounds unlikely, as it would undermine the serious argument made by some historians that Michelangelo was chaste with boys, whatever his feelings. [Website footnote]
[78] Walters 1979, 1876 [Author’s reference, but not identifiable in his bibliography].
[79] Orto, G. Dall’, Antonio Rocco and the Background of his “Alcibiade Fanciulo a Scola”. In: Duyves et al (Eds.), Among Men, Among Women. Amsterdam Gay-Studies and Women’s Studies University of Amsterdam Conference, 1983, p. 231 [Author’s reference]. The ultimate source was a government informer. [Website footnote]
[80] Bullough, V. L., Sexual Variance In Society and History. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1976, pp. 474-475, 478 [Author’s reference]. This is a perfectly ridiculous claim, whether it is Bullough’s or Brongersma’s. Who is supposed to have put them on equal terms and where? Equal in what way? What is ”girl-love” even supposed to mean here? The notion that there is a ”girl-love”as distinct from love of females in general is surely a 19th-century invention. Can anyone produce evidence to the contrary? [Website footnote]
[81] West, D., Homosexuality Re-Examined. London: Duckworth, 1977, p. 128. [Author’s reference]
[82] Foral, S., Die Orgie. München: Heyne, 1981, p. 191 [Author’s reference]. This is true, so why not be authoritative and, instead of giving some dubious second-hand source, give a citation from Liselotte’s published correspondence? In English, this would be A Woman’s Life at the Court of the Sun King: Letters of Liselotte von der Pfalz, Elizabeth Charlotte, Duchesse d’Orléans, 1652–1722, translated by Elborg Forster (Baltimore, 1984) pp. 161-2. [Website footnote]
[83] Rey, M., Sexual Ambiguity and Definition of a Particular Taste: Male Relationships, from the End of Middle Ages to the French Revolution. In: Duyves et al (Eds.), Among Men, Among Women. Amsterdam: Gay-Studies and Women’s Studies University of Amsterdam Conference, 1983, p. 204. [Author’s reference]
[84] Hahn, J. G. von, Albanesische Studien. In: Italiaander (Ed.), Weder Krankheit noch Verbrechen. Hamburg: Gala, 1969, p. 91. [Author’s reference]
[85] Bremmer, J., An Enigmatic Indo-European Rite: Paederasty. Arethusa 13:2, 1980, p. 289; Naecke, P., Über Homosexualität in Albanien. In: Jahrbuch für Sexuelle Zwischenstufen IX. Lepizig: Spohr, 1908, pp. 325-337 [Author’s references].
[86] Bullough, V. L., Sexual Variance In Society and History. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1976, pp. 64, 67. [Author’s reference].
[87] Stoll 1980, 955 [Author’s reference, but not identifiable in his bibliography].
[88] Tifâchi, A. Al, Les délices des coeurs.1. Paris: Martineau, 1977 [actually 1971], pp. 179, 316. [Author’s reference]
[89] Burton, R. F., The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night – A Plain and Literal Translation. London: Burton Club, 1885, VIII 348; Wagner, E., Abu Nuwas. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1965, pp. 47, 76, 165, 175, 177, 302, 308 and especially 121 and 167. [Author’s references]
[90] Wagner, E., Abu Nuwas. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1965, p. 320. [Author’s reference]
[91] Stern, B., Medizin, Aberglaube und Geschlechtsleven in der Türkei. Berlin: Barsdorf, 1903, II 213-215. [Author’s reference]
[92] Eppink, A., Sexualiteit en verliefdheid bij Marokkaanse jongens en meisjes. Amsterdam: Averroës Stichting, 1976. [Author’s reference]
[93] 1980, 81, 86, 88-89, 92 [Author’s reference, not identifiable in his bibliography].
[94] Sutor, J. (Docteur Jacobus X.), The Erogenous Zones of the World, by a French Army Surgeon. New York: Book Awards, 1964, p. 172. [Author’s reference]
[95] Mehta, R. J., Scientific Curiosities of Sex Life. Bombay: Taraporevala, undated, 1934 [Author’s reference].
[96] Schmidt 1922, 172 [Author’s reference, but two books fitting this description are in his bibliography]
[97] 1967, 167 [Author’s reference, but the only work by Gopal in his bibliography was published in 1969]
[98] Bullough, V. L., Sexual Variance In Society and History. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1976, pp. 302, 304-306. [Author's reference]
[99] Aron, J.-P. & Kempf, R., Le pénis et la démoralisation de l’Occident. Paris: Grasset, 1978, p. 31; Karsch-Haack, F., Das gleichgeschlechtliche Leben der Ostasiaten: Chinesen, Japaner, Koreer. München: Seltz & Schauer, 1906, p. 16. [Author’s references]
[100] Karsch-Haack, F., Das gleichgeschlechtliche Leben der Ostasiaten: Chinesen, Japaner, Koreer. München: Seltz & Schauer, 1906, pp. 26, 48, 51. [Author’s reference]
[101] Karsch-Haack, F., Das gleichgeschlechtliche Leben der Ostasiaten: Chinesen, Japaner, Koreer. München: Seltz & Schauer, 1906, p. 121; Krauss, F. S., Auch in Japan seit uralten Zeiten bekannt. In: Italiaander (Ed.), Weder Krankheit noch Verbrechen. Hamburg: Gala, 1969. [Author’s reference]
[102] Patzer, H., Die griechische Knabenliebe. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1982, p. 25. [Author’s reference]
[103] Karsch-Haack, F., Das gleichgeschlechtliche Leben der Naturvölker. München: Reinhardt, 1911. [Author’s reference]
[104] Ford, C. S. & Beach, F. A., Formen der Sexualität. Berlin: Rowohlt, 1968. [Author’s reference]
[105] Karsch-Haack, F., Das gleichgeschlechtliche Leben der Naturvölker. München: Reinhardt, 1911, pp. 358-362. Stoll, O., Das Geschlechtsleben in der Völkerpsychologie. Leipzig: Veit, 1908, pp. 955-956. [Author’s references]
[106] Devereux, G., Institutionalized Homosexuality of the Mohave Indians. In: Ruitenbeek (Ed.), The Problem of Homosexuality in Modern Society. New York: Dutton, 1963; Italiaander, R., Beobachtungen bei den Negern. In: Italiaander (Ed.), Weder Krankheit noch Verbrechen. Hamburg: Gala, 1969, p. 99. [Author’s references]
[107] Borneman, E., Lexikon der Liebe. Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978, p. 327. [Author’s reference]
[108] Borneman, E., Lexikon der Liebe. Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978, p. 1431. [Author’s reference]
[109] Borneman, E., Lexikon der Liebe. Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978, pp. 127-128, 132, 145; Ploss, H., Das Kind in Brauch und Sitte der Völker. Leipzig: Grieben, 1884, II 529. [Author’s references]
[110] Jensen, A. E., Beschneidung und Reifezeremonien bei Naturvölkern. Frankfurt am Main: Strecker & Schröder. 1933, p. 82. [Author’s reference]
[111] Borneman, E., Lexikon der Liebe. Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978, p. 591. [Author’s reference]
[112] O’Carroll, T., Paedophilia – The Radical Case. London: Peter Owen, 1980, p. 41. [Author’s reference]
[113] Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg, G., Der Streit um die Pädophilie. Spontan 13, 8: 21-22, 1980; Herdt, G. H., Guardians of the Flute - A Study of Ritualized Homosexual Behavior. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981, pp. 232-292. [Author’s references]
[114] Bullough, V. L., Sexual Variance In Society and History. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1976, p. 37. [Author’s reference]
[115] Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg, G., Mannbarkeitsritten–Zur institutionellen Päderastie bei Papuas und Melanesiern. Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1980, pp. 96-97. [Author’s reference]
[116] Lawrence 1983, 14. [Author’s reference, not identifiable in his bibliography]
[117] Schérer, R., Emile perverti. Paris: Laffont, 1974. [Author’s reference]
[118] O’Carroll, T., Paedophilia – The Radical Case. London: Peter Owen, 1980, 41. [Author’s reference]
[119] Borneman, E., Lexikon der Liebe. Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978, p. 1431. [Author’s reference]
[120] Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg, G., Mannbarkeitsritten–Zur institutionellen Päderastie bei Papuas und Melanesiern. Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1980, p. 57. [Author’s reference] This is almost certainly taken from Wiiliam Davenport’s "Sexual Patterns and Their Regulation in a Society of the Southwest Pacific", published in Sex and Behavior, edited by Frank A. Beach (New York ; Wiley & Sons, 1965), though the absence of consent in his account is not so stark. He merely says “It is considered a kind of duty to obligingly accede to the demands of an older man.“ [Website footnote]
[121] West, D., Homosexuality Re-Examined. London: Duckworth, 1977, pp. 135-136. [Author’s reference]
[122] Erman, A., Ethnographische Wahrnehmungen und -erfahrungen an den Küsten des Beringsmeeres. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 3, 149-175, 1871. 164. [Author’s reference] Actually, on the subject of Greek love, Erman does no more than quote from a much earlier book by F. von Wrangel, Reise längs der Nordküste von Sibirien u. s. w. (Berlin, 1839), vol. 2 p. 227. What Erman said about boys and girls having sex at ten (more accurately: "given together already in their tenth year") referred to the Atcha Aleuts and is therefore irrelevant. [Website footnote]
[123] Borneman, E., Lexikon der Liebe. Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978, p. 1254. [Author’s reference]
[124] Leyten, H., Nuba. Utrecht: Spectrum, 1978, p. 300; Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg, G., Mannbarkeitsritten–Zur institutionellen Päderastie bei Papuas und Melanesiern. Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1980. p. 60; Riefenstahl, L., Die Nuba. 5. München: List, 1973; Riefenstahl, L., Die Nuba von Kau. München: List, 1976. [Author’s references]
[125] Patzer, H., Die griechische Knabenliebe. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1982, p. 88. [Author’s reference]
[126] Italiaander, R., Beobachtungen bei den Negern. In: Italiaander (Ed.), Weder Krankheit noch Verbrechen. Hamburg: Gala, 1969, pp. 107-108. [Author’s reference]
[127] Murray, S. O., Sociological Theories/Homosexual Realities. New York, 1984, p. 46. [Author’s reference] the real source for this is Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard’s "Sexual Inversion among the Azande", in American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 72, No. 6 (December 1970) pp. 1428-34. [Website footnote]
[128] Bullough 1970, 31; Cline, W., Notes on the People of Siwah and El Garah in the Libyan DesertNotes on the People of Siwah and El Garah in the Libyan Desert. Menasha (WI): Banta, 1936. [Author’s references, of which the first is unidentifiable in his bibliography]
[129] Maugham, R., The Boy from Beirut. San Francisco: Gay Sunshine, 1982, p. 122. [Author’s reference]
[130] Edwardes, A. & Masters, R. E. L., The Cradle of Erotica. New York: Julian, 1963, pp. 246-7. [Author’s reference]
[131] Schneebaum, J., Keep the River on your Right. New York: Grove Press, 1969. [Author’s reference]
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