SEX WITH MEN: BISEXUAL BEHAVIOUR
BY EDWARD BRONGERSMA

“Sex With Men: Bisexual Behaviour” is part of “The Outlets”, the final section of “Boys and their Sexuality”, the third 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.

Misgivings about being converted into a homophile himself may evaporate as soon as the boy has had intercourse with a girl and has ascertained for himself that he functions “normally”. If there is sufficient opportunity for heterosexual sex, most boys will look for satisfaction that way; if not they may turn to a male friend.

151  Eric is still occasionally visited by his former boy-friend, now seventeen. “He then wants to have a good round of sex with me, like we used to. This happens when he has played with a girl physically but hasn’t made love, and for this he needs me. I don’t think with another boy I would go along with such an arrangement, but, because of our former relationship, it seems all right to me.”^[1]

152  “While fondling me he’s talking about his girl-friend,” Saint Ours says of his young friend.^[2] 

153  “Never underestimate the potency of many 15-year-olds. I knew one who would ejaculate with his girl twice in one evening and then would be at my house within an hour of taking her home, acting as if he were sex-starved,” says a boy-lover, quoted by Rossman.^[3] 

An experienced boy-lover may know quite well that an initial refusal is far from being final, that, in fact, it only serves the purpose of keeping up an appearance of being “normal”.

154  A tourist, guided around Lisbon by a handsome boy, invited the youngster, at the end of their perambulations, to a restaurant for a good dinner. Afterwards he proposed that the boy spend the night with him, but the youngster indignantly refused: “I have a girl-friend; I don’t sleep with men!” The foreigner accepted this calmly, saying, “Well, let’s meet tomorrow afternoon for another walk, then.” The boy showed up right on time. They made the excursion, followed it with another dinner. When they had finished eating, the man said, “Well, good night. See you again tomorrow.” “No,” the boy said, “I’d like to come to the hotel with you!” In the bedroom the youngster immediately undressed without being asked to and, naked, approached the man, proudly pointing to his erection. He was very passionate in his love-making. The key to his behaviour was that sleeping with a stranger would be prostituting himself, but now that the man had shown he valued his company despite the lack of sex, the two were friends, and sexual intimacy with a friend was fine. (Personal communication)

155  (Continued from 142) In a vacation camp, Thomas met 13-year-old François. The boy was big for his age, well past puberty, and was furthermore extremely intelligent. They got into discussions about literature and philosophy. Thinking François most attractive, Thomas managed to meet him again three weeks later. François saw at once that Thomas was falling in love with him, but he confided that “it” had happened to him once already, with a man, but it had been horrible and he never wanted to have an experience like that again. For the next three months Thomas and François lived in the same building, their bedrooms next to each other. The boy enjoyed kissing Thomas, but that was as far as the intimacies would ever go. Then they went on a trip together and suddenly, in a hotel room, François let himself go. Their relationship continued for two years, and at a certain point François, now fifteen, asked Thomas to take him from behind. At first the man refused, because for him this wasn’t terribly important. But François insisted. “It was marvellous, and I believe it was the same for him, because he came at the same moment I did, and this certainly proves that something was going on inside him.”^[4]

Ironically, it is sometimes just the traditional “law and order” upbringing that makes smaller boys so docile towards a sexual approach by adults. It is a well-established fact that the so-called “child-molester” is usually no stranger but in 70% to 80% of the cases a member of the family, a neighbour, a teacher, a friend of the parents, or someone with whom the child has long been acquainted.^[5] Now if the child has been inculcated with the belief that he has to be polite to adults, never to contradict them and always to do as he is told, he is likely to put this to practice when an adult he is familiar with asks him to feel his penis or undress.^[6] Other parents impart a lesson to their sons quite at variance with its intent: by making all that is pleasant and nice forbidden and evil, the boy easily comes to a most logical conclusion – everything that is prohibited must be nice. Since every child is told not to go with a stranger, he may get the idea that the mysterious stranger has something nice in store for him.^[7] Especially open to such ideas are boys whose sexual education at home has been repressive and to whom “the whole domain of sexuality has been taught to be out of bounds for children.”^[8] 

Since in pre-pubertal boys curiosity is a powerful incentive^[9] and since its strength is a measure of intelligence, bright boys are, on average, more willing to be initiated than the duller ones.^[10] On the other hand, they are also better able to defend themselves against unwelcome sexual advances and assault.^[11] 

In some long-term relationships, sexual intimacies may arise only very gradually. They may even be postponed for a long time.

156  A Dutchman used to share a bed regularly with a ten-year-old boy, and in the course of time he came to love the lad deeply. But the child had once been sexually assaulted by a man in a most brutal way and this left him with a mortal fear of sex. Only after a year and a half did the man dare touch his little friend in an intimate manner. The boy accepted this without any problem, and so put behind him his traumatic experience. (Personal communication) This case is quite similar to that of François (No. 157).

But the male sexual appetite is so imperious that not rarely the first opportunity which presents itself is exploited.

157  “A well-known gay writer I know (…) once advertised for sex with teenage boys. He met a 14-year-old who was quite attractive, but my friend was most disturbed when the boy immediately pulled out his own cock and wanted to see and touch the man’s cock within moments of getting in his car. The man wanted courting and romance first; the boy wanted to get to the genital point.”^[12]

In criminal trial records we come across all kinds of “explanations”, often rather peculiarly worded, of how the accused managed to make the boy willing – gifts, enticing him to a certain place, asking for a service, pretending to give sexual instruction, using obscene language, showing obscene pictures, presenting himself as the kind of person who could be trusted, as Niemann^[13] lists them. They show rather clearly that threats and violence are nearly never employed, and that the majority of the so-called “victims” don’t have to be “made willing” but are spontaneously ready for the experience or have even taken the initiative. As Groffmann, a forensic medical expert, put it,^[14] “Many children and young people meet the offenders with affective willingness conditioned by the evolution of their natural needs.”

158.  In a letter to a friend a British seaman told how on Pitcairn Island in the Pacific (where the famous mutineers of the Bounty went to settle) he met a fourteen-year-old white boy by the name of Donald. He told the boy he had some magazines with pictures of naked women, and Donald, who had never seen such pictures, insisted on going on board ship with him. “When this boy saw the nude girl pictures his eyes went like organ stops. For half an hour the boy sat and through these two nudist magazines he went over and over again. And all the time he had a beautiful erection showing through his thin cotton shorts. So I went to work on him. He had never heard of homosexuality or masturbation, but, if it was ‘sex’ he would like to try it. So he stripped naked and I done everything to this 14-year-old except penetration. For two hours solid we played around and this boy quivered beautifully, especially when he made sperm (5 times) and he was exquisite to kiss from the lips down, After I finished my love-making on him he just lay on my bed, legs apart, and murmuring over and over again ‘Beautiful, beautiful’. And believe me, he was beautiful, to make it beautiful. He requested one more round, we tried but he couldn’t make sperm the sixth time round and my jaws and arms just felt like dropping off with wear and tear.” This letter was accompanied by four pictures showing a fine, sturdily-built boy with fully developed genitals. (Archives of Brongersma Foundation)

Provoking a boy’s heterosexual response is a very common device. The man shows him pictures of naked women, alone or having sex with men or each other, or he projects movies of such scenes, realising that any boy in sexual arousal wants to do more than just watch: his penis will be crying to be handled. An American with a lot of experiences, John Valentine, advises the boy-lover to bring up the subject of sex in conversation: “We’d ostensibly be talking about balling chicks and how to improve one’s performance, and I’d describe and demonstrate things that feel good, showing him both how to do them and how they feel. Nothing compromising to begin with, but progressing at a rate established by the boy. Progress was usually total. (Often in a well-directed discussion of homosexuality, a boy will allow as how he’d kind of like to try it, but didn’t know how to go about getting it done. But not often enough). (…) It’s always good to establish early that (when it comes to it) you don’t generally go in for this kind of thing, but such is the strange & powerful attraction this exceptional boy exerts on you that you just can’t help yourself. (…) (In this connection, it furthers one to be ‘bisexual.’ Many boys who’d never bed down with a faggot have no such prejudice against bi’s).^[15] The man must not appear over-eager – and by no means sentimentally enamoured, because this frightens a boy, as Hirschfeld^[16] observed many years ago. He should treat the boy neither as a child nor an adult, for he is in a transitional stage.^[17] Valentine recommends that you be “warm and avuncular.” “You can seduce a boy by awing him with your wisdom (this is the Guru ploy) or by making yourself the object of his hero worship. (…) You cannot seduce a boy who doesn’t admire you. (…) Diffidence is no aid to seduction. If you can’t bring yourself to ask for what you want, you’re unlikely to get it. (…) The boy must be put at ease before you can begin. He should feel comfortable, and be glad to be with you. (…) It must be obvious that nothing you might do would be disgusting, etc., that you would never hurt him.” The man may help the boy in finding excuses, such as a massage. If he has a little alcohol (not even enough to feel it) he can pretend to himself afterwards that he was drunk. Easiest to conquer, Valentine concludes, are the horny ones, the curious, the tired, the poor, those who feel appreciated; the more difficult are the frightened, the very insecure, the defensive, the exhausted, the middle-class or rich, the pure intellectuals.^[18]

Desire for coitus with a woman can drive a boy who has just become sexually mature into a frenzy. If he has allowed an older friend into his confidence, he might implore the man to furnish him the opportunity he is unable to create himself, thus following the classical example of Theseus who, at sixteen and so fresh looking that people on the streets took him for a girl, seduced old Minos in order to sleep with his daughter.^[19]

159  One of Rossman’s subjects told him, “When boys ask why I’m not married, I say because I like both boys and girls and the law won’t let me marry one of each (…) When I see a boy who is stunned by this, I may say: ‘I’m going to bed tonight with a girl who’d just love to have you join us. You want to make it a threesome?’ That’s an invitation that’s rarely refused. Almost any boy of fourteen to sixteen is likely to go wild at that suggestion no matter what his moral or sex education has been. People who say that one could never persuade a really masculine boy to do this or that have obviously never tried giving him a cute girl to enjoy while doing it.”^[20] 

160  (Continued from No. 104) Eighteen-year-old Alcide: “There’s a man with whom I afterwards became very good friends. At the very beginning he used a girl in order to seduce me. I was thirteen at the time, and he knew I sort of wanted to sleep with a girl. So he said to her, I know, ‘Look, you entice Alcide to your room, then I’ll come to you and sleep with him, and so on.’ Thus it was arranged, and I had just started to have sex with the girl when he joined us and we turned it into a threesome. It was a sort of charade we had cooked up together, he and I, to involve a third person in our relationship. But when you get right down to it, we had a love relationship, not just a sexual one. I was head over heels in love with this man. I felt a very close bond with him, just as you always do when you’re in love with someone. So when people claim that children of thirteen, fourteen are unable to love and have normal sexual intercourse and so on, I believe they’re completely wrong. At thirteen you can have regular sexual intercourse just as well as anybody else, with girls and with men.”^[21]

Alcide, in retrospect, doesn’t complain about this ploy. Nevertheless, such tricks should be rejected on principle. Not only do they end up ultimately frustrating both partners, as Kentler perceptively observes,^[22] but they are indicative of a fundamentally immoral disrespect for the younger partner. And the man does not succeed in having the boy really abandon himself to him, only in receiving the boy’s sexual favours in exchange for something else (a gift, money, drugs or chance for heterosexual coitus).

A married woman having sex with a boy, her husband finding out and then using the boy to satisfy his own lusts is a theme which in Antiquity Apuleius wove into a fine story. Boccaccio later incorporated it into his Decamerone. Martialis pokes fun at a boy-lover who at first refused to marry Telesina because she was a whore – but made her his wife soon after he heard the rumour that she had a preference for boy-clients (II-49).^[23] In other epigrams this poet warns boys that they will have to expiate their intimacies with married women by means of their behinds or their mouths (II-47, 60).^[24]

161  Gerbener^[25] reports the case of Reinhold. When the boy was thirteen he spent the summer vacation with a married couple. One morning when her husband was away the woman, who was 31, turned the conversation to the subject of sex and finally asked, “Will we have a try at it?” Reinhold immediately agreed, and they had intercourse. The woman told her husband about this, and the next three nights they had a threesome in bed.

Continue to Sex With Men: The End of the Affair

^[1] Th. Sandfort 1979, 177 [Author’s reference, but it is not clear to which book by Sandfort he was referring].

^[2] Saint Ours, Un ange à Sodome. Paris: Authier, 1973, 98. [Author’s reference]

^[3] Rossman, P., Sexual Experience Between Men and Boys. New York: Association Press, 1976, 143. [Author’s reference]

^[4] Hennig, J.-L., Thomas, 30 ans: Bruno, 15 ans: le nouveau couple zig-zag. Recherches 37: 137-166, 1979, 151-153. [Author’s reference]

^[5] Albrecht, O., Die Unzucht mit Kindern. Kiel Universität, 1964, 2. Baurmann, M. C., Angezeigte und veruteilte Sexualkontakte aus viktimologischer Sicht. In: Albrecht-Désirat & Pacharzina (Eds.), Seksualität und Gewalt. Bensheim: Päd-extra, 1979, 103. Gebhard, P. H., Gagnon, J. H., Pomeroy, W. B. & Christenson, C.Y., Sex Offenders. New York: Harper & Row, 1965, 817. Kerscher, I., Kubitzek, D. & Schütz, Chr., Didaktisch-methodische Aspekte einer emanzipatorischen Sexualerziehung. In: Kerscher (Ed.) Konfliktfeld Kindersexualität. Frankfurt a.M.: Päd-extra, 1978, 152. Lafon, R., Trivas, J, Faure, J.-L. & Pouget, R., Victimologie et criminologie des attentats sexuels sur les enfants et les adolescents. Annales médico-psychologiques 41, 1: 97-106, 1961,  97. Niemann, H., Unzucht mit Kindern. Göttingen: Schwartz, 1974, 115. Wind, E. de, Variatie of perversie. ‘s-Gravenhage: NVSH, 1969, 78. [Author’s references] 

^[6] Duvert, T., L’enfant au masculin. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1980, 43; O‘Carroll, T., Paedophilia – The Radical Case, London: Peter Owen, 1980, p. 145 [Author’s references].

^[7] Brethmas, J. de, Détournement de majeur. Paris: Perchoir, 1980, 93. [Author’s reference]

^[8] Kwast, S. van der, Seksuele criminaliteit. Leiden: Stafleu, 1968, 75- 76. [Author’s reference]

^[9] Groffman, K. J., Die psychischen Auswirkungen von Sittlichkeitsverbrechen bei jugendlichen Opfern. In: Blau & Müller-Lückmann: Gerichtliche Psychologie. Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1962, 165. [Author’s reference]

^[10] Gerbener, H., Die Kriminalität der Kinderschändung im Landgerichtsbezirk Duisburg in den Jahren 1950-1954. Bonn: Universität, 1966, 88. Niemann, H., Unzucht mit Kindern. Göttingen: Schwartz, 1974, 98. Wegner, A., Die Sittlichkeitsdelikte an Kindern und Jugendlichen in der Nachkriegszeit. Bonn: Röhrscheid. 1953, 57. [Author’s references]

^[11] Hanack, E.-W., Empfiehlt es sich, die Grenzen des Sexualstrafrechts neu zu bestimmen? München: Beck, 1968, 91. [Author’s reference]

^[12] Reeves, Th., Man-Boy Scenes in the United States. In: Duyves et al (Eds.), Among Men, Among Women. Amsterdam: Gay-Studies and Women’s Studies University of Amsterdam Conference, 1983, 21. [Author’s reference]

^[13] Niemann, H., Unzucht mit Kindern. Göttingen: Schwartz, 1974, 128. [Author’s reference]

^[14] Groffman, K. J., Die psychischen Auswirkungen von Sittlichkeitsverbrechen bei jugendlichen Opfern. In: Blau & Müller-Lückmann: Gerichtliche Psychologie. Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1962, 164. [Author’s reference]

^[15] Valentine, J., Puppies, Glen Ellen: Entwhistle Books, 1979, pp. 150-2 [Author’s reference].

^[16] Hirschfeld, M., Die Homosexualität des Mannes und des Weibes. Berlin: Marcus, 1914, 542. [Author’s reference]

^[17] Brethmas, J. de, Traité de chasse au minet. Paris: Perchoir, 1979, 76. [Author’s reference]

^[18] Valentine, J., Puppies, Glen Ellen: Entwhistle Books, 1979, pp. 150-5 [Author’s reference].

^[19] Peyrefitte, R., La jeunesse d’Alexandre. Paris: Albin Michel, 1977, 194-195 [Author’s reference].
     His reference is to a modern novel, and this is a version of the myth of Theseus unknown to the ancients. According to the usual version, the Cretan King Minos exacted an annual tribute of youths and maidens to be given to his wife’s bastard, the monstrous Minotaur. The Athenian prince Theseus eventually took the place of one of them and eloped with her after she gave him critical help in killing the Minotaur. A discordant version recorded by Athenaios, The Learned Banqueters 601f comes closer to Brongersma’s by saying that Minos abandoned his quarrel with Athens and gave Theseus his daughter because he loved him, but no ancient says people on the streets took Theseus for a girl or that he was the seducer. [Website footnote]

^[20] Rossman, P., Sexual Experience Between Men and Boys. New York: Association Press, 1976, 209. [Author’s reference]

^[21] Schérer, R., L’emprise. Des enfants entre nous, Paris: Hachette, 1979, p. 264 [Author’s reference].

^[22] Kentler, H., Sexual-erziehung. Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1970, 173. [Author’s reference]

^[23] Martialis, M. V., Oeuvres complètes, Paris: Garnier, II 49 [Author’s reference]

^[24] Martialis, M. V., Oeuvres complètes, Paris: Garnier, II 47, 60 [Author’s reference]

^[25] Gerbener, H., Die Kriminalität der Kinderschändung im Landgerichtsbezirk Duisburg in den Jahren 1950-1954. Bonn: Universität, 1966, 83. [Author’s reference]