On Boy-Love - Paedophilia
Historical and Scientific Perspectives
O. Brunoz
Editor's Notes (Ipce)
(1) The following text is the first translation into English of the Dutch book Pedofilie, published in 1960. It was written as a response to a controversy within the gay movement in the late 1950s as to whether or not to remove boy-lovers and paedophiles from the Dutch gay rights organization, COC. The book was published in two editions, Dutch and French:
![]() | O. Brunoz, Pedofilie (Amsterdam: C.O.C., 1960) and |
![]() | O. Brunoz, La Pedophilie: L'amour des garcons, with a preface by Victor Servatius (Rotterdam: Enclave, 1964). |
(2) Note that the author defines 'boy' as "a sexually mature non-adult. The reader will do well to keep this definition in mind, ...". Thus, what he calls 'paedophilia' is not attraction to the prepubescent child - especially boy - but to the pubescent and adolescent boy - just that what we nowadays give the name 'hebephilia'.
Introduction
Goethe once said,
"The love of boys is as old as the human race, and so we can say that it is a part of nature." <note>1
He could well have added that this love is as widespread as the human race. In all centuries, in all nations, among all races, among all peoples we find men who feel themselves erotically attracted exclusively to boys, and who desire to have sexual relations with them.
When confronted with this phenomenon, societies have adopted every imaginable attitude.
![]() | Boy-love has been celebrated as the noblest bond between two human beings; |
![]() | it has been accepted as a self-evident fact; |
![]() | it has been institutionalized according to a set of rules; |
![]() | it has been socially condoned; |
![]() | it has been regarded as the object of good-natured mockery; |
![]() | it has been violently detested; |
![]() | it has been declared to be a severe crime; and |
![]() | sometimes not only the adult man but even the boy with whom he "sinned" have been tortured and put to death. |
Whatever the reactions, it has always occupied the human mind, and the related scientific studies, the innumerable poetic and romantic descriptions would fill a small library.
Yet, a comprehensive, contemporary study of boy-love, and its role in present day society, is still lacking and might itself fill more than one large volume. The goal of the present work is, however, more modest, namely to arrive at a better understanding of the phenomenon so that the reader will be that much better able to form a judgment.
We shall first have to ask why it is so difficult for any of us to maintain a balanced attitude when the subject is broached. It is clearly necessary to approach the subject with the utmost caution and not to be carried away by our emotions. We shall also have to ask whether or not, and to what degree, the censorious arguments usually put forward are valid. If such arguments cannot be maintained in the face of scientific evidence, we shall then have room to show that there are, in fact, both favorable and unfavorable aspects to boy-love, a conclusion that might have been expected from a phenomenon capable of arousing in mankind's greatest thinkers and leaders a range of reactions from horror to glorification.
The object of this work is, therefore, to assemble facts and information. It is not an attempt to arrive at a comprehensive moral and ethical assessment. We have deliberately not asked whether it is even permissible for a man to approach a boy sexually; such a question can only be decided within the context of a well-defined system of sexual morality, and as long as the reader and author disagree about this system, no rewarding discussion between them is possible.
We have here devoted ourselves primarily to a discussion of the influence on the boy, and possible benefits or harm, of such a sexual relationship. Thus, we do not delve deeply into the many theories attempting to explain how the man's erotic feelings become directed towards boys. For our purposes, it makes no difference whether a person is born a paedophile or acquires this sexual desire through social influences later in life. Neither does it matter whether this tendency is "curable" or unchangeable. It is only the mutual, erotic relationship between the boy-lover and the boy which we shall set out now to describe as clearly as we can.
1. The Terminology of Paedophilia
We have used the words "paedophile" and "paedophilia" because of their classical reference to more ancient expressions of boy-love. We will keep to this terminology, even though we fully realize there are people who do not find these words apt, for example, because of their modern medicalization.
In antiquity the Greeks used the words paidophil and paidophilein to indicate a man's love for a boy, while paiderastia, or paidoon eros indicated the behavior and the phenomenon. Pais means boy, but also child, and as the inclination we are discussing here is very specifically directed towards boys who are biologically sexually mature and certainly not towards prepubescent children, some authors have proposed to call the inclination towards teenage boys ephebophilia.
I do not agree. The word ephebophilia is a modern invention. It was unknown to the Greeks <note>2.
They would not have used it in their descriptions of the eros between men and boys. In Athens, for example, a young man was called ephebe when he was between 18 and 20 years of age; in other cities when he was between 16 and 18 <note>3.
To be an ephebe meant to be poised on the edge of adulthood: the ephebe was marriageable and entitled to vote. Speaking about boy-love, we refer -- and the Greeks referred -- to a younger age, to boys who had perhaps just reached sexual maturity, but were not yet fully developed.
It is better to keep the word paedophilia, even if it has the disadvantage of not clearly distinguishing four distinct phenomena:
![]() | Men desiring small girls; |
![]() | Women desiring boys; |
![]() | Women desiring girls; |
![]() | Men desiring immature boys. |
None of these four inclinations, however, has at any time been so widespread or important as the desire for pubescent boys. However, it does seem apparent that father-daughter incest is much more common that the public supposes <note>4.
Although Stekel calls the tendency very common, it seems that the erotic preference of adult women for pubescent boys occurs less frequently than it does in men <note>5.
Perhaps it is not surprising that Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita, describing an adult man's love for a 12-year-old girl, became world famous, while Albert Nortal's Le fruit vert et la chair fraiche, published about the same time and dealing with a love affair between a woman and various 15-year-old boys, went unnoticed <note>6.
A difference of literary quality is not enough to explain this. Louvet de Couvray's Les amours du Chevalier de Faublas, also with a 15-year-old protagonist, also failed to gain popularity <note>7.
According to some theories, this form of paedophilia is mainly found in heterophile women looking for a male love object whom they can dominate; therefore, the boy's clumsiness and inexperience during the first physical contacts strongly excite their lust; they play the role of motherly friend, initiating the boy in new pleasures. These theorists also note that there may be a certain sadistic pleasure in destroying his virgin purity <note>8.
As we learn from the dispute between a man-loving woman and a boy-loving woman in The Thousand and One Nights, the normal female would find the clumsiness and lack of control of boys in sexual intercourse to be a distinct disadvantage <note>9.
According to Kinsey, homophile paedophilia is much less common among women than among men. This is easily understood, for physically the difference between a mature girl and an adult woman is much less than the difference between a pubertal boy and an adult man. The male paedophile is attracted by properties of the boyish body which are lacking in the adult male; for these he must address himself to boys. But it must be very exceptional that a woman feels herself erotically attracted to those traits which distinguish the girl from the woman.
What remains to be discussed is the inclination of adult men towards immature boys.
![]() | Bloch thinks such child-love among homophiles is rare <note>10. | ||||||||||||
![]() | Premsela says that the widely-held opinion that all homosexuals are boy-molesters is entirely unjustified; according to him, the large majority prefer individuals past childhood <note>11. | ||||||||||||
![]() | According to Hirschfeld, among homophiles only 5% are interested in boys under 14 <note>12. | ||||||||||||
![]() | Giese examined a sample of 220 homophiles; three men preferred boys 12 to 16, but none were attracted to younger boys <note>13. | ||||||||||||
![]() | Among 133 cases of boys having had sexual
relations with a man for which the man had been
convicted by the court, Tolsma encountered
|
It must be taken into account that the risk of being discovered by the police is greater in sexual relations with very young partners than with older boys, and so 19 out of 133 is certainly not an accurate figure.
Considering the psychology of the adult partner implied in sexual activities as well as the importance of these activities for the younger partner, it seems necessary to distinguish clearly between the cases in which the boy is sexually mature and those in which he is not. If the boy is immature, not only the natural barrier of belonging to the same sex, but also the absence of sexual equality must be taken into account. In a mature boy the man looks for a partner who has the necessary physical development and the sexual drive to share completely in the union.
The remainder of our study will deal exclusively with this last form of paedophilia, that is to say, the erotic inclination of adult males towards sexually mature but not yet adult males.
2. What Is a Boy?
A "boy" is a sexually mature non-adult. The reader will do well to keep this definition in mind, for in daily speech and in the press, even young fathers of children are often still referred to as "boys."
As always where we are dealing with human development, it is impossible to fix exact age limits. The American scientists Herbert Rowell Stolz and Lois Meek Stolz, authors of Somatic Development of Adolescent Boys, made a systematic study of the subject <note>15. Their abundantly illustrated book contains the results of their research of over 150 American schoolboys whom they measured and photographed every six months from their 10th to their 18th year.
It is difficult to indicate the exact moment when the boy attains somatic maturity, that is to say, begins to produce fertile sperm. The only definitive method to establish this is through laboratory testing of morning urine, and insufficient research is available up to this writing.
The Stolzes limited their study of maturation to the changes photographically perceptible in the genital organs. Generally the period of accelerated growth in the whole body appeared to coincide exactly with the period of accelerated growth of the testicles and the increase in volume of the anterior part of the penis.
The development of pubic hair showed little connection with these other changes and is therefore a less reliable indication of maturity: pubic hair may precede biological maturity, but may also come after it. In this sample, the accelerated growth in size and development of
![]() | the penis begins at an average age of 12.6 years (in the earliest at 11, in the latest at 14.4), and |
![]() | the testicles at an average of 11.8 (in the earliest at 9.7, in the latest at 13.2). |
The accelerated development
![]() | of the penis ended at an average of 15 years (in the earliest at 13.4, in the latest at 16.6) and |
![]() | of the testicles at the average of 16.3 (in the earliest at 14.5, in the latest at 18) <note>16. |
The moment of maturation must fall somewhere between these limits. Undeutsch calculated this for boys in Germany at 13.68 years <note>17.
In the 1930s in Berlin, Dr. Wilfried Zeller examined 414 schoolboys aged 14.
![]() | In 23 of them, the genitals were still entirely childlike, while |
![]() | in 31 they were already completely mature. |
![]() | The remaining showed intermediate phases <note>18. |
Hurlock indicates 13 and 14 as the age of most rapid development of the genitals <note>19.
The nature of male sexuality, directed as it is towards expression, would indicate that in most boys the first ejaculation should occur soon after maturation. Better nourishment and hygiene accelerate development.
Kinsey established the average age of first ejaculation
![]() | of the working class as 14.2 years, |
![]() | of secondary-school pupils as 13.7, and |
![]() | of the university-bound as 13.4 years <note>20. |
The most advanced in maturation (0.1%) start in their eighth year, the slowest (0.2%) at age 18.
According to Kinsey, in most boys the pubic hair (average 13.4 years), the first ejaculation (average 13.8), and the change of the voice (average 14.4) precede an accelerated growth in height <note>21.
In Hurlock's study the order of development is:
![]() | voice change, |
![]() | development of pubic hair, and |
![]() | ejaculation <note>22. |
According to Zeller, the final phase, complete adult male development, is
![]() | first attained in the maturation of the larynx, |
![]() | then in the appearance of the genitals, |
![]() | the change of color and shape of the nipples, |
![]() | the shape of the whole body, |
![]() | the growth of the beard, |
![]() | the axillary hair, |
![]() | the pubic hair, |
![]() | the remaining body hair, and |
![]() | the timbre of the voice <note>23. |
It may seem superfluous to discuss this matter at such length, but many adults, including those writing and talking about paedophilia, are unfamiliar with these facts; they often discuss the behavior of 14-year-old boys as if they were entirely sexless beings. Such a misjudgment of reality distorts the view of paedophilia.
3. Paedophilia and Boy-love in Antiquity
If we fix the youngest age of a paedophile's object of attraction at an average of 14 years (as early as 12 for precocious developers) and the upper limit at 18 (as late as 20 or 21 for late developers), this corresponds perfectly with what the Greeks of antiquity meant by paidoon eros, boy-love, especially if we take into account that boys in Mediterranean lands mature earlier than in The Netherlands.
The poetic monument for classical boy-love is found in the twelfth book of the Anthologia Graeca (or Palatina), prepared by Hermann Beckby in a new edition including a German translation. The 258 epigrams are exclusively love poems devoted to boys and range from tender adoration of their beauty to coarse sensual descriptions of physical intercourse <note>24.
The fourth epigram reads:
When a boy is twelve he gives me pleasure
And when he's thirteen he'll attract me more
At fourteen he's the sweetest blossom of love
And when he turns fifteen it is keener yet;
Boys of sixteen are for the gods, and I wouldn't touch
A boy of seventeen because he's only fit for Zeus;
If you're looking for older boys the game is off.
It's obvious -- you want him to do the same to you.
Sexual activities with individuals much younger and much older were considered objectionable. Epigram 228 expresses this clearly:
If a budding boy errs through inexperience
This casts shame upon the friend who seduces him;
If a boy past the proper age suffers a man's love
His willingness magnifies the shame two fold
But Moiris, my boy, there's a stage when it's no longer
And not yet shameful and that's upon us now, you and me.
Bloch indicates that Greek boy-love was inspired by boys aged 12 to 18 <note>25.
Lucian calls it indecent to have relations with a youth over 18 <note>26. When his beard started growing and the pubic hair became thick, a boy lost his sensual desirability, Bloch says.
In epigram 220, Prometheus is held responsible for the horrible growth of the beard and for the hairiness of the boy's legs; that Zeus punished him is only just, the poet sighs.
In epigram 195, he complains about a boy's beauty being destroyed by sprouting hair, as a beautiful flower fades away on a hot day.
This theme recurs constantly. For instance, in epigram 31:
"By Zeus and the wine that inebriated me, you have still little time left for love. Your chin and your legs are already downy and soon love will prefer other subjects. Don't be prudish as long as there is still a spark of fire in you: Eros has his own period."
In the same vein, the Roman poet Martialis offers his wishes to his friends that their young slaves will maintain their smooth skin for a long time <note>27.
In this regard the Greeks and Romans of antiquity thought precisely the same as all other peoples among whom boy-love was customary.
The Persians, referring to the first growth of the beard, said,
"The cheeks are mourning for the beauty that has passed." <note>28
According to Krauss, the Japanese call the beloved boy takenoko, i.e., bamboo shoot. Shoots of bamboo are edible as long as they are young and hairless. A Japanese manual for boy-lovers advises against intercourse with a boy when his arse hairs begin to show <note>29.
The last line of the fourth epigram of the Anthologia Graeca (quoted above) points to a characteristic difference between the ancient boy-love which was a popular custom and what we today call paedophilia. Where boy-love is customary, intercourse with boys is sought mostly by heterophiles. For these men, such intercourse is only a variant on the intercourse with a woman, and so in the meeting of their bodies they expect from the boy a female, passive role.
In his Art of Love, Ovid mentions this explicitly as his reason for preferring a girl to a boy,
"Odio concubitus qui non utrimque resolvant."
(I don't like sexual relations which are pleasing to only one of the partners). <note>30
In the same vein, see epigram 208 in book 5 of the Anthologia Graeca.
The sneering final line of the fourth Greek epigram, as well as many lines of the Latin poet Martialis, show it to be indecent and humiliating for a man were the boy to take the active role during intercourse, and especially so if he was exclusively the active partner. <note>31
In present-day boy-love this is, of course, different. If the sex contact is inspired by a tendency exclusively directed towards boys, then the man will value the boy as a partner in love in the same way as an adult friend in a homophile relationship; the sexual activities are performed in essentially the same way and with the same variations and interchange of roles.
We see this clearly illustrated in most of the 40 love stories of male homophiles collected by George W Henry in his book Sex Variants <note>32. Insofar as the experiences related here are of youths with adults, all kinds of contacts are mentioned, active and passive, entirely mixed. We will return to this point later in this study.
4. Homophiles Are Not Paedophiles
The majority of heterophiles formerly supposed that every homophile is more or less paedophile. Superficially, everything seems to support this view. Why should the average male-loving man react differently than the average female-loving man?
In Dutch law, a girl is allowed to marry when she is 16, and, with a royal dispensation, even younger. To have sex appeal at that age is considered normal.
In 1959, a Greek newspaper reported the marriage of a 15-year-old shepherd boy with a shepherdess of the same age <note>33, reminding us of the 16-year-old Nikolio from Kazantzakis' fine novel, The Last Temptation of Christ. Readers familiar with stories of Erskine Caldwell such as Tobacco Road, set in the American South, know that even younger marriages occur there. Truman Capote's masterly novella, "My Side of the Matter," in A Tree of Night and Other Stories, also treats this subject.
Various considerations usually deter an adult man from sexual intercourse with a mature girl of, for example, 14. Nevertheless, it would be decidedly unusual if a beauty of so many (or so few!) springs did not excite an erotic interest in him. So why should this be otherwise for homophiles when it comes to boys? When contact ads in magazines for homophiles indicate 21 years as a minimum age, this is done exclusively to respect the limits fixed by law. As soon as a country lowers the age of consent, the age in contact ads is also lowered immediately. In the Danish monthly Vennen, for example, interest is repeatedly shown for 18-year-olds <note>34.
But it is certainly not true that the age limit would be lowered much further if there were no legal limits, or if people simply ignored them.
Leonard R., one of the 40 men described by Henry in Sex Deviants, is the proprietor of a homophile rendezvous and has an ever-changing stable of 10 young men for his clients. On the strength of his 15 years experience in this business he states,
"They always want boys between the ages of 16 and 28." <note>35
It may happen that a homophile, who enjoys gently teasing his paedophile acquaintances about their addiction to urchins -- as he calls them jeeringly -- nevertheless might show great interest in a publication such as Hajo Ortil's A Hundred Naked Rebels, a special issue of the naturist periodical Helios entirely devoted to boys and children <note>36.
Should we call this hypocrisy? No, we can honestly believe his assurance that he appreciates a boy aesthetically, but feels in no way tempted to a sexual contact with him, just as many homophiles admire the well-built body of a girl without desiring intercourse.
The big difference between the situation of the heterophile and that of the homophile is that the body of a mature girl and that of an adult woman are not so dissimilar, whereas the physical appearance of an adult man is considerably different from that of a boy.
If asked why they prefer boys, paedophiles mention the smooth, hairless skin, the more rounded forms, the freshness, the slender waist, the ruddy cheeks, the clear eyes, the full red lips, the sheen of the boy's hair. A typical example is the beloved boy, Tadzio, in Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice."
On the other hand, a male with thick facial or body hair, a particular attraction for quite a few homophiles, will be quite abhorrent to the paedophile, and he might even prefer the body of a woman to that of such a man. A paedophile especially appreciates all those qualities of a boy which a man by nature lacks, qualities which amorous poets have long extolled in girls and women <note>37.
Arab poets, of course, often followed a reverse course and declaimed, when complimenting a girl, that she was as beautiful as a boy!
5. Paedophilia Is Closer to Heterophilia
It should be self-evident that the true homophile, the typical man-loving man, is not fascinated by boys. However, many heterophiles are capable of boy-love. Voltaire, who professed some homosexual inclinations, wrote:
Not rarely a boy, by the fresh color of his face, the shine of his skin and hair, and the soft glow in his eyes, will for two or three years very much be like a beautiful girl; if you fall in love with him, the cause is an error of nature. <note>38
It is inconceivable that androphile homosexuality would enjoy wide popularity, for only a small minority of men can express such desires; however, sexual relationships between men and boys has indeed gained widespread approval in some periods and in some countries <note>39.
It must be further noted that sexual activities among boys are in all places and times so widespread that no expert will interpret them as an indicator of homophilia. According to Kinsey, 45.4% of high school age boys have experiences of this kind -- to orgasm! <note>40
When Zeus, in the guise of Amphytrion, stole into Alkmene's bedroom, their meeting pleased him so much that he returned three nights in succession. The result of this exuberance was the superman Heracles. Greek mythology has it that in a single night he deflowered 20 girls, but it also enumerates not less than 14 romantic adventures with boys <note>41.
In ancient Rome, boys and girls were seen equally as objects of male desire. Petronius described the world in which he lived in his Satyricon, just as, centuries later, Louis Couperus in Holland depicted this same world in his novel De berg van licht (The mountain of light) <note>42.
Martialis wrote about the clientele of brothels: the client inspects the cells
"where a boy or a girl welcomes you with a smile." <note>43
When his friend Flavius started on a journey to Cyprus, Martialis expressed the wish that he
"shall find a handsome boy for himself alone and excite the lusts of a very chaste girl." <note>44
And equally, as a matter of course, Horace admonishes an acquaintance:
. . . tument tibi cum inguina, num, si
Ancilla, aut verna est praesto puer, impetus in quem
Continuo fiat, malis tentigine rumpi?. . . if your blood is boiling, maiden,
why burst with lust, while having in your home
a slave girl or boy, immediately for the taking?
<note>45
If one accepts the behavior of the mass of mankind as a yardstick, then the paedophile inclination and taste are without doubt more normal than the homophile. The paedophile is nearer to the heterophile, who, isolated in prisons, barracks, or the jungle, frequently takes a boy as a female substitute. Conquering armies used to rape not only woman and girls, but, when these were lacking, boys as well.
We have as a reference not only the lively portrayal by Pearl Buck in Dragon Seed of such an event during the Sino-Japanese war; World War I also presented examples; and an anecdote, related by Hirschfeld in his Sittengeschichte der Nachkriegszeit is characteristic: When the mayor of a small Bavarian town refused to obey the order of the French commandant to install a brothel for the occupying soldiers, he was warned that in the absence of such an institution no girl or boy would be safe <note>46.
Years ago the French Archives de Criminologie published the results of an enquiry of Foreign Legion soldiers. In the region where these troops encamped, women were scarce and generally rather unsavory. The men, even those who were entirely oriented to heterophlia, therefore satisfied themselves with native boys. The following are characteristic answers about how they felt:
"In the beginning it seemed disgusting, but I became curious and did it several times. However, I prefer a native girl."
"At first I felt real abhorrence, but one day, far from the village, my sexual drive made me do it. Nowadays from time to time I beg a boy to allow me to do it to him, but only when I'm far away from the camp."
"I never got used to it, the more so because women in the villages are easy to get."
"I don't do it myself, but I can well understand how some might."
"I did it several times, because I wanted to try something new. But to me it remains dirty."
"When there are no women, you have to take what there is."
"It's convenient to take a boy when you are out on an expedition and far away from camp, but otherwise I prefer a woman."
"At first, just after my arrival here, I felt disgusted at the very thought of intercourse with a boy. As an officer of the Legion I gradually got accustomed to the fact that men did it. Finally I was appointed to a lonely post and, moved by curiosity, I decided to give it a try. I then observed that I felt much better when I used a boy from time to time, and that it was a necessity for my health. I found such a pleasure in it that at present I don't desire anything else and prefer intercourse with boys as being by far the most enjoyable." <note>47
Sexual intercourse between boys and married men is not in the least exceptional, even under normal circumstances. Native law in Queensland, Australia states that a man may make sexual use of his wife's younger brothers during her absence <note>48.
Burton tells the story of a married Italian fisherman who was asked whether he had ever sinned against nature. He denied this vehemently but shortly afterwards spoke about his sexual activities with boys. "So you lied," he was reproached. He replied, however:
"Oh no! You asked me whether I had sinned against nature, but to enjoy myself with boys is as natural to me as eating or drinking." <note>49
Among more than one hundred men accused of sexual crimes with minors, Tolsma found 11.6% married and 7% divorced <note>50.
Kinsey found among his subjects hundreds of youngsters with stories of homosexual relations with older, socially-successful married men <note>51.
Boys who have had a great deal of experience with older men quite frequently show a certain pride regarding their conquests of family fathers.
Superficially, we would now suppose that paedophilia,
being the most normal deviation (according to works of
Moll and Havelock Ellis), situated between the
heterophile norm and the homophile deviation from the
norm, should meet with some understanding from all
sides, and that the average heterophile would
demonstrate much less emotional dislike of paedophilia
than of homophilia <note>52.
Actually, the contrary is true.
6. Appreciation by Women
It must be especially difficult for women to understand the nature and the meaning of sexual relationships between men and boys. In his book Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, Kinsey demonstrates convincingly how very different the evolution of sexuality in girls is from that of boys. The appetite for sexual activities arises spontaneously in boys at the onset of puberty and is usually very strong. Even without anyone stimulating him, a boy generally becomes familiar with sexual gratification and begins to want it early in life. In girls, on the contrary, a longer dormancy ensues, with vague, indeterminate desires; the sleeping beauty usually must be awakened by a kiss from her prince.
It would therefore be difficult for a woman to understand how a boy approached sexually by a man experiences something totally different from what she herself might have experienced as a girl. Apart from what it actually does to a boy (we will discuss this later), it usually does not raise unfamiliar impulses in him but is merely an invitation to experience an already familiar sexuality with a partner. Maternal feelings, or fallacious notions about children's innocence, might incite strong indignation in women against the adult so engaged with a boy.
7. Attitude of Homophiles
The severe judgment of many homophiles regarding paedophile relationships might sometimes ring false but in general springs from sincere feelings. When they set out to demonstrate to the heterophile society the radical difference between a homophile and a paedophile, their arguments often sound hollow. It might be that they think that the problems facing homophiles would vanish if there were no "criminals" molesting children.
The homophile's aversion toward paedophiles can be said to be as real as the society's prejudice towards minorities. It is as "fair and reasonable" as prejudice towards Jews or Negroes or the aversion of heterophiles towards homophiles. Arguments are always invoked to justify such prejudice, more or less cleverly assembled and varying from seemingly reasonable to raving nonsense, but these arguments are not the heart of the matter.
The most important point is that only one who is gifted with that rare trait of tolerance accepts with equanimity the fact that some people think differently, look differently, believe differently, judge differently, feel differently, and desire differently. Necessary, if rarer, is the capacity to be conscious of the promptings of one's own soul, and to consider these critically.
Nearly every day, homophiles experience unjust and unreasonable treatment from a society which does not understand their feelings and calls them deviant. It would be most agreeable to paedophiles if this bitter experience of prejudice inspired homophiles to be more open-minded and sympathetic to the needs of paedophiles, even if paedophile feelings are so different from their own. But this presumes that homophiles have above-average reason, powers of self-criticism, tolerance, and brotherly love.
In an homosexual rights organization such as COC (Cultuur en Ontspanningscentrum -- Culture and Leisure Center), which has much more to offer homophiles than paedophiles, the number of paedophiles will be very small.
Giese researched readers of homophile periodicals, and of the replies received
![]() | 27% were from men attracted not only to other men but also to boys under 18, and |
![]() | only 2% from men exclusively attracted to boys of this age <note>53 . |
However, according to Hirschfeld, the number of paedophiles is almost equal to the number of homophiles: among one hundred men whose sexual impulse is directed towards the same sex, there will be
![]() | 5 attracted to immature children, |
![]() | 45 paedophiles, |
![]() | 45 attracted to adult men and |
![]() | 5 attracted to "grey beards." <note>54 |
The Wolfenden report (1957) states that among 155 males arrested for infringing laws against homosexual activities,
![]() | 69% preferred adults, |
![]() | 27.7% preferred boys, and |
![]() | 3.3% felt attracted to adults as well as to boys. |
Whatever may be the truth, the number of paedophiles is certainly not small. In The Netherlands alone there must be thousands. Their situation is extremely difficult. They feel most akin to homophiles, who seldom show any understanding, and they can expect even less from heterophiles. The reason for this is paradoxical: it is exactly because the heterophile is generally susceptible to paedophile feelings that he reacts so emotionally to their every expression.
8. Pure and Impure Heterophilia
I once went with a medical student friend of mine to a swimming pool. He suddenly pointed to an exceptionally beautifully proportioned boy of about 14 standing at the side and said,
"Look what a marvelous body that kid has; every detail is nice and so well proportioned."
In his voice was a tone of undisguised admiration, perhaps partly inspired by his knowledge of anatomy, but the dominant impression he made on me was,
"This fellow must be one hundred percent heterophile to admire so calmly and openly a naked boy's body."
Heterophilia is seldom so pure and simple. The concept of a spectrum of sexual inclination, with as poles the 100% heterophile and the 100% homophile, had been postulated in scientific literature long before Kinsey established that sexual conduct conformed precisely to this notion. In a tabulation of data for 1057 white males aged over age 35 when interviewed, Kinsey arrived at the following figures for American males aged 16 to 35 (i.e., the sexually most active period):
![]() | 0.5% had no sexual contacts at all; |
![]() | 76.3% had contacts exclusively with women and girls, and felt exclusively excited by women and girls; |
![]() | 3.8% had occasional contacts with a man or a boy, and felt excited by them; |
![]() | 5.6% had more than occasional contacts with men or boys and were decidedly excited by them, but were nevertheless mostly inclined to heterosexuality; |
![]() | 3.4% were in contacts and feelings about equally heterophile and homophile; |
![]() | 2.1% had quite a number of contacts with women or girls and were decidedly excited by them, but were nevertheless predominantly homophile; |
![]() | 1.6% had incidental contacts with a woman or a girl and felt excited by them, but had nearly exclusively homophile relations; |
![]() | 6.7% had exclusively relations with men or boys <note>55. |
To understand these figures properly, we must take into account that they were collected in a society where homophilia is officially taboo and where such desires are therefore consciously or unconsciously suppressed. It is quite possible to conjecture that a substantially larger percentage of heterophiles have a significant homophile tendency.
The instinct driving males towards females is not as sure and certain as one might wish to believe, and the common occurrence of boy-love in ancient Hellas and Rome, the Chinese, the Japanese, among primitive tribes in Australia, throughout the Middle East, among Indian tribes in North and South America, and both cultured North-Africans, and black Africans living in the most primitive conditions, proves that the body of a boy, endowed as it is with so many female characteristics, is especially able to provoke erotic feelings in the majority of male heterophiles.
Take several examples from Africa.
![]() | In the Siwan tribe, most of the men have anal intercourse with boys. Any individual not taking part in this custom is considered abnormal. |
![]() | In the Aranda, every unmarried man is accompanied by a boy who lives with him like a wife until the man marries. |
![]() | Among the Keraki, all young men experience anal intercourse. In the first years after puberty, boys play the passive role, but later on they take the active role with younger comrades. The natives think these relations are necessary for healthy growth <note>56. |
Where this attitude prevails, nearly every normal man proves himself capable of arousal in paedophile relationships, although this is not permitted in modern Western culture, where it is generally supposed that a man should be inclined to heterophilia. Not only should he not touch men or boys, he is not even permitted to desire such contact. We do not like deviations, things that are different, or people who act differently from the great majority. To call someone a homophile is a criminal insult. Homophilia is not something which someone takes up only for pleasure, even though this is used to justify reprisal.
9. I'm Not Allowed to Be So, Therefore I Am Not
Anyone familiar with the tortuous ways of the human psyche will know how often things are distorted to comply with the prescription, "I'm not allowed to be that way, and so I am not that way." We are particularly strong in repressing those parts of our minds that we dislike. Homophile desire, and especially paedophile desire, are energetically repressed and kept outside conscious thinking. The more powerful these desires are, the more energy is spent on suppressing them.
It is, after all, necessary for the inner peace of every heterophile who does not want to be what he is not allowed to be. He therefore becomes violently agitated when the border between unconscious and conscious is threatened, and this happens whenever he is confronted with homophilia and paedophilia. He must try not to dwell on these things, for he might then realize how much he has in common with them! He reacts with total and absolute rejection, violent emotion, aversion, and loathing, and as paedophile desire is stronger and more frequent in heterophiles than in homophiles, his reaction against paedophilia is usually all the more charged.
Such a reaction is not in bad faith; it is quite spontaneous. The real motives remain mostly obscure to the persons themselves. Only those who are aware of their innermost being and are at peace with the strange and "deviant" elements in their own minds can calmly judge homophilia and paedophilia.
Goethe wrote a lot of crude, sexual poetry, which for a long time none dared to publish. He was also open to paedophile feelings. In Wilhelm Meister he describes the profound emotion he experienced on seeing the splendid body of his young friend swimming naked. In the second part of Faust, paedophile sentiments are also voiced. But the most eloquent expression of the inner peace with which this famous woman-lover accepted this other element in his soul is the undisguised confession of anal intercourse with boys and girls in his Notizbuch von der schlesischen Reise im Jahre 1790 (Notes from a trip in Silesia in the year 1790):
Knaben liebt' ich wohl auch, doch lieber sind mir die Madchen;
*Hab' ich als Madchen sie satt, dient sie als Knabe mir noch <note>57.
I also loved boys, but I preferred girls.
When I'm fed up with a girl, she may still serve me in the way a boy would.
The pure heterophile can be a balanced judge. A young man once told me how, when he first heard homophilia discussed, he thought it so strange and incomprehensible that he went out and had himself a homosexual adventure in an effort to comprehend these feelings. He confessed that he failed to experience any lust.
His research method may not have been the best, and a psychoanalyst might not consider this the most convincing proof of his heterophilia, but it is a fact that I seldom heard anybody discussing homophilia as calmly and objectively as this man who by his own admission understood nothing about it. On the other hand, when I see an author, a lecturer, a moralist, a judge, or a prosecutor railing against homophilia and paedophilia, lacking words to express sufficiently his disgust and aversion, I always think, "Poor chap, did you get such a big dose of it yourself?"
10. The Art of Forgetting
It is surprising how well a person can hide his real tendencies from himself and how well he can forget his own past! Stekel tells of a young woman with a pathological fear of losing her virginity <note>58. She was afraid to stand between men in a tram, or to walk beside a spiked iron fence. A medical examination showed that she had been deflowered years before. Through psychoanalysis she revealed that this had taken place in a painful and extreme way while visiting an uncle when she was 17. She had completely blocked out the terrible facts. Was this pathological?
Consider also the following true story. During a stay as a guest with acquaintances of his parents, Peter, a student, shared a bedroom with John, the 14-year-old son of his host. One night John's father entered their room unexpectedly and found the two boys naked together in bed, in an unambiguous position. Big scandal and much ado! John's father telephoned Peter's father, very excitedly, saying it was unheard of and that he had never seen the likes of it. He demanded severe punishment for Peter and threatened to call the police. He was convinced that his son was headed for moral ruin. The following conversation ensued:
Peter's father: "What do you mean, you don't know anything about such things! Then what do you call what you did to me when I was 15 and you were 20?" John's father: "What are you talking about?" Peter's father: "Don't you remember, in our tent on the beach on Texel?"
A long silence on the other side, a stifled curse, the phone call broken off. That's how it goes.
11. The Real Arguments
Of course such stories do not prove that all objections and arguments against paedophile relations are nonsense or arise solely from prejudice. Until now we have not really discussed these objections and arguments; we have only talked about how difficult it is for most people to arrive at a level-headed judgment concerning a subject so threatening to the balance of their souls.
The principal argument made against paedophile relations, and the basis for criminalization, is that they prematurely awaken and pervert the sexual impulses of the boy, and make him homophile. Experts have refuted these allegations.
Paedophiles like to point out the favorable pedagogical influence the loving adult may exert on the young partner. They point to the lessons of Greek boy-love, which included sexual intercourse, extolled by the noblest classical philosophers. However, I think that this appeal to the Greek tradition is insufficient. We need a completely new understanding.
In addition to positive aspects, we must also consider those negative possibilities which render most paedophile relationships suspect. We need to look at the question raised by homophile critics: can real love exist between a man and a boy? Are the partners too unequal; is the youth too young to be truly united in a love in which sexual contacts are lifted above a pursuit of purely physical pleasure?
12. The First Argument Against Paedophilia
a. It Arouses Latent Sexuality
The first reproach to the paedophile, especially if he has physical contacts with his young friend, is -- as formulated by Tolsma -- that he awakens the sexual impulse in the young pubescent boy <note>59.
This is all the more resented because our society regards nearly every sexual expression in young people with disapproval. It is a problem in our western societies that education and instruction preparing youth for full-fledged citizenship demand more and more of the young person's life: marriage is further delayed while the onset of puberty has been advanced by one or two years, possibly because of improved nourishment and hygiene.
Nobody has come up with a solution for the sexual difficulties for young people that this raises. Adults ignore them, indeed shift the full burden onto the shoulders of the youth. But when youth tries to sexualize, adults get very angry. On this point our civilizations are backward compared to the majority of primitive tribes. There, every boy receives information and a solemn initiation; the sexual problem hardly exists because a boy is considered a mature tribesman and a prospective husband as soon as his body is mature. In our world, however, these phases of development pass without notice.
The average marriage age for males in The Netherlands, at this writing (1960), is nearer 30 than 20. It is officially assumed that adolescents and young men should not begin sexual activities until they are married. Expressions of sexuality inconsistent with this official supposition are generally disapproved of, the more so the younger the transgressor.
The effect of this hypocritical situation is that most adults, blissfully ignoring their own youth, are blind to reality. They abandon themselves to the strangest illusions about a boy's experience of his growing sexuality. When it comes to light that a particular boy has had sexual relations with a man it is thought to be extraordinarily shocking.
It drives people -- such as the author of a letter to the homophile monthly De Schakel -- to describe 14- to 16-year-old adolescents in such bizarre terms as "children unfit for sexual consumption." <note>60. It evidently completely escapes this writer that he is casually asserting something which really needs proof, for his words flatly contradict the convictions and experiences of most of mankind.
Kinsey concluded that even today nearly all primitive peoples still allow boys to have intercourse as soon as they are physically mature <note>61 .
Most of these peoples see this premarital sexual activity as desirable, and sometimes establish a specific location where boys may train for the sexual act without disturbance. Roman law fixed the minimum age of marriage for boys at 14, and this was the same under the old Dutch legal system <note>62 .
Marriages at what to us seems an extremely young age were not at all exceptional in Western Europe just a few centuries ago.
![]() | Louisa of Savoy, when she was only 13, complained that she had been married for a year and was still not pregnant. In 1506 she accepted as her lover the 16-year-old Charles de Montpensier, who had already been married for some time. |
![]() | In 1437 the French king Louis XI, while a crown prince of 14, conquered Chateau-Landon from the English. Having thus proved his virility, he then demanded that his parents allow him to sleep with his even younger wife, Margret of Scotland. He made such violent use of his marital rights that the girl was confined to bed for several days. |
![]() | At age 15, the son of Francis I married the 15-year-old Catharine de Medici; the king came at night to their bedroom to watch them have intercourse. Francis I said that any boy over 14 who had not yet had sexual intercourse was a sad spectacle <note>63. |
Today we find boys of this age too immature for marriage, but the difference is not due to slower physical development. The reason resides in the much higher spiritual and intellectual demands our society imposes on a husband and father. Childhood, the period of instruction and subjugation to parental authority, is considerably longer. The human being, however, is such a mental and physical unity that all these changes also have a decided influence on the sexual life.
The 15-year-old American or Western European of today may be more childish in his emotional reactions to sexual intercourse than his age-peers were a few centuries ago or are still today in more primitive societies. He is, at present, certainly too childish for married life with all that it entails. But that he should also be too emotionally immature for sexual activities not involving the heavy responsibilities of family life seems impossible to believe. There is simply no proof to the assertion that present-day 14- to 18-year-olds in the industrialized nations differ sexually so completely from their age-peers several centuries ago, or even from primitive peoples today.
The main cause of misunderstanding is without doubt the fact that very few adults have good insight into the sexual needs and desires of youth. On both sides there is a conspiracy of silence. The novelist Han B. Aalberse has one of his characters observe with some humor:
I saw that adults could discuss their pleasures with adults and then say "Hush!" if children should overhear them. And that children could discuss their pleasures with other children and that they'd say "Hush!" if adults could hear them! And each group pretends to the other that these pleasures don't exist <note>64.
Knowledge of the at times raw facts of life should teach us that boys arriving at puberty are not as sexually dormant as Dr. Tolsma and most parents seem to suppose. Is seduction by an older person really needed to awaken the impulse? Some reflection on the biological meaning of sexual maturity, on the psychological meaning of male sexuality, and on the characteristics of boys arriving at puberty should make us suppose quite differently.
b. The Biological Meaning of Sexual Maturity
Observing nature, we are ever impressed by the enormous drive for life which dominates the earth. The desert lives, eels swim in the eternal night of deep caves, and organisms squirm under the polar ice. In mankind and the higher species of animals there are two instincts that promote the conservation and propagation of life: the self-preservation instinct, and the sexual drive.
Nature makes a boy's body start producing seed when he is about 12 to 14 years old. If it were up to parents, pedagogues, or the guardians of morality, this would, without doubt, occur many years later, but nature is apparently ill informed! Bent on her own purposes, she equips the body with the impulse to release this seed, preferably where it can fertilize. Whether the activities resulting from this impulse conform to man's laws and are in harmony with real human relationships is not nature's concern -- that is another matter entirely.
Abandoning the body to intercourse has an element of mystery in it, inspiring a kind of shyness. Everywhere we observe traces of this shyness, in the naked savage as well as in the man of culture. The sexual impulse must therefore be strong and powerful, strong enough to overcome this barrier of shyness. Otherwise the young man would not be able, at a certain age, to perform this remarkable mating act.
Uninvited and indiscreet as nature tends to be, the sexual impulse presents itself as soon as, or even before, the production of seed has started, and usually with great intensity. At the same time, nature does everything in its power to direct the boy's attention to the body's new capacity: the quick growth and the changing shape of the organs, coupled with the greatly increased excitability and flow of blood, provoking long-lasting erections; the sudden appearance of pubic hair; and in many individuals, erotic dreams accompanied by ejaculation. No wonder that nearly all boys spontaneously discover masturbation, if friends have not already taught them this practice.
It must be added that freshly-ripened boys are sexually potent to a degree only equaled by adults in a few exceptional cases. A boy of 15 told me that, twice a week, he used to pick up his girlfriend, walk with her for half an hour to a cinema, and after the film walk for an hour to an isolated spot where they had intercourse. From the moment he saw her until the climax he was continuously erect -- a period of about four hours.
According to Kinsey, many teenagers can maintain their erection for hours, even if stimulation is only slight, and even at times after two or three ejaculations <note>65. Adult males with the capacity to reach orgasm four or five times during a single encounter are rare, but on the eve of and at the beginning of puberty considerably higher figures (up to 10, 20 and even more orgasms within the space of a few hours) have been noted <note>66.
c. Psychology of Male Sexuality
The collection of essays Persoon en Wereld (Person and World), in honor of the Utrecht University psychologist Professor Buytendijk, on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, includes an articulate treatise by Dr. J. Linschoten, the man who succeeded Buytendijk <note>67.
In the study, "Aspecten van de seksuele incarnatie" (Aspects of Sexual Incarnation), Linschoten examined the significance of the body in sexual intercourse and formulated the thesis that the nature of the intercourse becomes evident in the manner in which it is expressed by the body. The psychological sense of male sexuality is therefore to be understood from the meaning of the penis, the pre-eminent male organ.
"The penis," claims Linschoten, "is in the theories of sexuality usually considered to be an instrument, and an aggressive, invasive instrument at that, a quality which characterizes the whole of male sexuality."
Linschoten rejects this view and considers the penis psychologically as a part of the body expressing something, namely the desire for unification. The erection expresses the willingness to be absorbed in the other. During copulation the penis cannot be considered to be an instrument because it does not depend on the will, nor has it any muscles -- it is only set in motion by the male moving his whole body.
Likewise it is not an organ of sense because the sensation of lust is not a means for perceiving the partner. In the orgasm born from love, only the outpouring of surrender to the beloved is experienced, and a total union; it is an ecstatic overstepping of one's own limit, an experience of the other in one's own body. As the penis is neither an instrument nor a sense organ, Linschoten can view the erection as the unmistakable expression of an immense, but at the same time helpless, tenderness <note>68.
These profound speculations doubtless provide a valuable broadening of our understanding, but they are certainly somewhat one-sided. The argument against the instrumental character of the penis is, when examined more closely, not very convincing.
It is not accidental, but a fact of highest importance for the psychology of male sexuality, that the popular names and the descriptions of the male sex organ in literature are so often taken from instruments -- especially from the most aggressive instruments, weapons.
One need only consult
![]() |
the lists furnished
| ||||
![]() | or look at Vorberg's Glossarium eroticum <note>71, | ||||
![]() |
or Pierrugue's <dictionary with the same title <note>72
[*] [* Archivist's correction: Pierrugues' (or Pierrugues's)] |
It is not only "an immense, but at the same time helpless, tenderness" that is expressed by the penis. If Linschoten limits himself to this, he is in conflict with his own prior statements, for he also quotes, while agreeing, from Sartre's Le Mur (The Wall),
"It begins to move like an animal, it then gets stiff, it makes me afraid when it stiffens and stands wholly erect, brutally . . ."
Referring to Sartre, Linschoten argues:
In its detumescent state the penis is certainly not the focal point of the naked male body. The eye will certainly not skip over it entirely, and is even arrested by the penis in the flowing motion of observation, but it will disregard this obstacle for the sake of the whole.
One views the classic Greek statue so: the penis is an accidental appendage, an innocent part of the body of which we admire the force, the muscularity, the balance and the attitude, the act and the expression.
With the erection, however, all these qualities are joined in this one part of the body. It destroys the aesthetic value of the whole, as it absorbs too much the attention and moreover sexualizes the body unambiguously. The figure's centre of gravity shifts to this obvious centre, this erect and tender member, behind which the male stands with all his power. It is the unmistakable sign of potency in every sense.
If it has an aesthetic value, then it resides in its horrifying and imposing beauty. As Jules Romains expressed it: a kind of tempestuous, frightening beauty <note>73.
Active power and aggression, the impulse to conquer and to penetrate are equally a part of male sexuality as helpless tenderness and vulnerability are. We find these qualities everywhere, starting with the mobile, striving spermatozoon, boring its way towards and into the female egg. They belong to male sexuality from the first moment it awakens in the boy.
d. Characteristics of the Boy
We need only mention some traits of boys important to this discussion.
![]() | They certainly want to act grown-up, and like to engage in activities nominally reserved for adults, such as sexuality; |
![]() | without much deliberation or resistance they let themselves be carried along by their whims; |
![]() | they are unruly and like variety and adventure; |
![]() | they like to boast about what they know and experience sexually, and also about their physical development. |
In her authoritative work, Adolescent Development, Hurlock observes that experimentation is the best way for the child to acquire knowledge, and encourages boys to experiment sexually <note>74 .
They are intensely interested in everything which has to do with the body and its development, and their curiosity in sexual matters is enormous, more passionate than for any other subject, even food. This often results in an exchange of knowledge and information, and a sharing in experimentation. Boys let themselves be carried along by their friends, even when unwilling; fear of being considered a spoil-sport or a coward weighs more heavily at this age than moral objections or shame.
e. What Do They Know?
On the basis of various studies, Hurlock determined that boys become conscious of their sexuality at an average age of 12.5 years <note>75.
In 1943 G.V. Ramsay questioned a large number of pupils in secondary schools regarding their knowledge of the facts of life and the age at which they had acquired such knowledge. His research dealt with high school boys belonging to a social group in which conversations in the home were more forthcoming about sexuality than in less educated milieu.
![]() | That babies grow in the mother's body was known
| ||||
![]() | intercourse was known to 91% and 99% respectively, | ||||
![]() | masturbation was known to 80% and 96%, | ||||
![]() | prostitution to 67% and 97%, | ||||
![]() | ejaculation to 57% and 93%, | ||||
![]() | contraceptives to 56% and 87%, | ||||
![]() | wet dreams to 40% and 73%, | ||||
![]() | menstruation to 23% and 38%, | ||||
![]() | venereal diseases to 21% and 57%. | ||||
![]() | All 15-year-olds knew about prostitution, | ||||
![]() | all 16-year-olds about ejaculation, masturbation, and intercourse <note>76. |
Referring likewise to pupils of secondary schools, the Dutch pedagogue Professor Perquin wrote in the monthly Dux that
"not a few boys know quite well that it is easy to meet homosexuals everywhere." <note>77
Where do boys acquire their information? Are all these things told to them by adult seducers?
Ramsay examined sources of information under various topics. For example, as for masturbation, the most suspect theme of conversation between an adult and a boy (and even there the discussion can be quite acceptable!), Ramsay established that
![]() | 44.2% were told about it by age peers, [!] |
![]() | 30.7% discovered it themselves, |
![]() | 21.2% had seen friends doing it, [!] |
![]() | 2.1% read about it, |
![]() | 1% [!!] were informed by their parents and |
![]() | 0.4% heard about it from other adults. |
![]() | For the remaining percentage the source could not be ascertained <note>78 - "[!]" inserted by Ipce. |
Friends gave information about
![]() | prostitution (93%), |
![]() | contraceptives (92.1%), |
![]() | intercourse (90.9%), |
![]() | wet dreams (68%), |
![]() | ejaculation (67.4%), |
![]() | venereal diseases (65.5%). |
Those who consider this kind of information absolutely undesirable for those of such tender age should not therefore protect boys against paedophiles but rather keep them from their friends!
f. Boys' Sexual Activities
If we take all of this into consideration we will not be surprised by the figures Kinsey established for the sexual activities of boys.
Sexual activity and the age of biological maturity are evidently related. According to Kinsey, the earlier a boy matures, the more intense remains his sexual activity during the whole span of his life <note>79 .
Another investigator, Lutz, discovered a relationship between precocity and intelligence <note>80 .
![]() | The most intelligent group matures at an average age of 12.5 years, |
![]() | the normally intelligent at 13.5 years, and |
![]() | the least intelligent at 14.5 years. |
Kinsey's figures confirm this phenomenon. Intelligent boys stand a particularly good chance of considerable early experimentation, the more so because precocious boys often face life in a more self-assured and resolute fashion and are, therefore, more enterprising.
We have seen already that boys of 14 are quite well informed; frequently they are not as innocent as many adults like to believe.
Kinsey found that
![]() | 72% of them had masturbated, |
![]() | 43% had petted with girls (leading to orgasm for 5%), |
![]() | 28% had already performed intercourse (3% with prostitutes), |
![]() | 25% had wet dreams, |
![]() | 21% had experienced orgasm in homosexual relations, and |
![]() | 8% had climaxed while having sexual contacts with animals <note>81 . |
Of sexually mature boys through age 15, more than 94% are sexually active in one or more of the aforementioned ways;
![]() | 0.3% had experience with all six methods, |
![]() | 2% with five, |
![]() | 8.3% with four, |
![]() | 22% with three, |
![]() | 36.7% with two, |
![]() | 25.3% with only one, and only |
![]() | 5.4% with none <note>82. |
In the remaining years of boyhood the activity and the variety of experimentation continue to increase. Of 18-year-olds,
![]() | 92% had masturbated, |
![]() | 84% had petted with girls (21% leading to orgasm), |
![]() | 68% had performed intercourse (37% with prostitutes), |
![]() | 71% had wet dreams, |
![]() | 37% had attained orgasm in homosexual relations, and |
![]() | 15% had reached orgasm through contacts with animals <note>83 . |
Of the 16- to 20-year-olds, over 99% were sexually active in one or more of the aforementioned practices;
![]() | 0.6% had experience with all six methods, |
![]() | 6.1% with five, |
![]() | 22.3% with four, |
![]() | 34.1% with three, |
![]() | 27.5% with two, |
![]() | 8.6% with only one, and not more than |
![]() | 0.8% with none <note>84. |
g. Conclusions
The sexual impulse manifests itself very powerfully during puberty; our society grants it, on the whole, no other safety valve than wet dreams, although a minority of pedagogues, including Vaessen, consider masturbation a normal or even healthy phenomenon <note>85.
The other practices are officially taboo. The awakening of the sexual impulse thus puts every boy in the difficult position of conflict between desire and what is permitted. An adult who by his seduction accelerates and causes this awakening is acting against the basic norm of morality which holds that we should render happier and better the existence of those persons we meet in life. We should not be increasing their burden.
However, it is evident that the chance that a paedophile might awaken the sexual impulse in a maturing boy is extremely slight. At the age under discussion here, sexuality is already conscious and very much alive, and 94-99% of boys are sexually active.
It will not do to denounce paedophilia because it is supposed to awaken the sexual impulse; the paedophile meets boys whose sexual impulse is already active. But does he not, through his contact, lead this impulse in the wrong direction? This is the question which we shall consider next.
13. The Second Argument Against Paedophilia
a. Can a Boy's Sexuality Be Changed by His Experience?
In his book La Puberte, the French physician Guy Laroche discusses the indeterminacy of sexual desire in the years of maturation:
From a biological and social perspective the most important fact is that the as yet indeterminate nature of the sexuality creates a condition that is essentially open to seduction. The sexual impulse of the child, not yet directed to a fixed object, adjusts itself easily, depending on the influences it is subjected to, to the normal sexuality or equally to its perversion.
Most fortunately, these influences are usually normal; it is rather exceptional that the child gets perverted suggestions strong enough to suppress the normal ones. But these years of inter-sexuality in maturation are without any doubt a critical period, decisive for the sexual future of the individual.In the life-stories of homosexuals we are very frequently told about some incident in childhood or in puberty which provided an impulse in an abnormal direction. In the years of adolescent development, such a perverse influence is more frequent than in childhood, because the shape of the body with its characteristics of both sexes, floating between masculine and feminine, has at that time the strongest attraction for the large majority of homosexuals.
What I have here remarked upon makes it quite clear that the majority of cases of true homosexuality one meets at this age are cases of homosexuality provoked by seduction by other adults, or elderly homosexuals <note>86.
The author believes that inborn homosexuality is a very rare phenomenon <note>87 .
The book I am quoting here was published in 1938, and there is perhaps no respectable author today willing to take responsibility for such an accumulation of false allegations.
I cited Laroche so extensively because this apparently closely-reasoned and reasonable-sounding argument is still widely circulated and constitutes the foundation for much of the criminalization and condemnation of paedophile activities.
In the Renaissance, Pacificus Maximus wrote:
"I'm that way entirely because of the teacher to whom my father and mother imprudently entrusted me. He was a first-rate boy-lover; no boy escaped his hands, so artful was he. I learned from him many things I would have been better off never learning." <note>88
As recently as 1948, the psychiatrist Dr. F.J. Tolsma declared in Homosexuality and the Homoerotic that the young adolescent boy
"under the influence of suggestive powers develops a belief in his own homosexuality, a belief which is rightly often called immutable." <note>89
Tolsma believes that, during the rest of the development of the youth, male homosexual experiences could leave their mark, and the evoked emotions could
"be activated at any time and disturb the normal bond to a heterosexual object."
We see how paedophiles,
"moved by their own lust, commit acts with the young boys entrusted to them, with possibly disastrous results for the rest of their lives."
Their influence is all the more dangerous because prepubertal boys
"easily adopt the views of other people, including the despicable one of homosexuality."Tolsma concludes:
"A homosexual should never be allowed to guide youngsters of the same sex. Experience shows that he will always commit homosexual sins. Such a person radiates an influence which may radically damage young lives." <note>90
After writing these dreadful things with such assurance, Dr. Tolsma sat down to study the facts. In 1956 he read a paper before the Forensic Psychiatry Association about "the importance of seduction in the evolution of homophilia," and what he now has to say is completely different.
To his surprise, he had discovered that ethnological data flatly contradicted his theory that seduction was a cause of homophilia. He cites the following example:
In the northern region of Malecula (New Hebrides) there is a tribe called the Big Nambas, where every man has a boy who must be totally submissive to him, including sexually. This paederastia is motivated by the belief that it strengthens the penis, that is, that the penis becomes bigger and stronger.
Paederastia is well organized among the Big Namba. Heterosexual relations before puberty would weaken a male. Boys masturbate by themselves and with each other.
Every chief has a number of boys at his disposal. Some chiefs are known to have infrequent sexual relations with their wives. The adult man, called Nilagh Sen, has total control over the boy, the Mugh Vel. The boy is not allowed to have sexual relations with another man without the permission of the Nilagh Sen, who may, nonetheless, sell his rights to another man. The Nilagh Sen and the Mugh Vel are always with each other, and the death of one of them is deeply mourned by the other.
The sexual activity is only allowed with a boy not genealogically related to the man. The Nilagh Sen is known to be very jealous. Once the boy has passed through the very painful and frightening rites of initiation, he is entitled to choose a friend himself <note>91.
Tolsma took these facts from A.B. Deacon's Malekula, published in 1934 <note>92 .
These boys, subjected to intensive homosexual practices from a very early age, do not become homosexuals and do not suffer any harmful consequences. Tolsma was forced to reconsider his position.
In a later study he called the widespread rejection of paedophile relations with boys both "naive and pointless." Listening to life histories of some homophiles he was inclined to attribute some importance in their evolution to early seductions, but he was unsure of it.
A study of the life histories of 133 adolescents and men who as boys had been involved in sexual relations with men later indicted by the authorities brought Dr. Tolsma to a new thesis,
"If a seduction occurs, this does not mean that the individual will evolve in a homophile direction." He added, "We should take care not to dramatize these situations beforehand."
The seduced boys later married and fathered children in the same proportion as their peers. Tolsma concludes
"that the seduced persons, after their experiences with seduction, may well attain normal heterosexual relations." <note>93
He does add, however, that further research is necessary.
b. The Accusation Refuted
Such an opinion is not new. At the beginning of this century the Archives de Criminologie had already declared that homosexual activities leave only a slight impression on heterosexual boys. Nearly all boys engage in sexual activities with their comrades, while only a small percentage become homophiles <note>94 .
In his Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Havelock Ellis declares it "highly unlikely" that seduction by itself could awaken homosexual desire <note>95 .
Any influence conflicting with one's true disposition has no power. He cites in this connection the words of Albert Moll,
"One can only divert someone to the extent that his nature makes him susceptible to it."
Placzek asserts in his Freundschaft und Sexualität (Friendship and Sexuality):
It makes no difference how boys come to have a homosexual relationship. If they are by nature sexually normal, they will sooner or later find the way to normal sexual intercourse, and youthful digressions will leave no impression. They may also lead to a lasting friendship in which sexual activities no longer occur <note>96.
Dr. O. Schwarz writes similarly in his Sexual-pathologie:
The importance of seduction in the origin of homosexuality in youth, and for further sexual development, is not very great. There are enough boys who are completely unaffected by all these activities around them, and others go along with it for a while without it being of real importance to them. They soon stop <note>97.
The German physician Esser, even though he favors criminalizing homosexuality, is forced to admit,
"If a boy after having relations with a homosexual becomes a homosexual himself, then he would have become one even without these relations." <note>98
Another section of the Archives de Criminologie quotes the German sexologist Nacke,
"I don't believe that books, seduction, or suggestion will ever turn a heterosexual into a homosexual, just as it is impossible to convert a real homosexual by suggestion to heterosexuality." <note>99
Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld agrees completely with the previously-mentioned opinion of Havelock Ellis <note>100. He refers to the view of Krafft-Ebing, who declares in his Psychopathia Sexualis that he is not acquainted with a single instance of a man "perverted" by "deviant" sexual acts to deviations in his sexual desire. He further quotes Moll, who also doubts whether frequent homosexual activities could result in a homosexual impulse in heterosexual individuals <note>101.
The question was discussed extensively by the official British Home Office Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution chaired by Sir John Wolfenden. The Committee concluded,
"We are not convinced that homosexual behaviour is a decisive factor in the production of the homosexual condition," <note>102
The committee later returns to this theme:
We have found no convincing evidence in support of this contention. Our medical witnesses unanimously hold that seduction has little effect on inducing a settled pattern of homosexual behaviour, and we have been given no grounds from other sources which contradicted their judgment <note>103.
An article in the anthology Homosexuality edited by Dr. Charles Berg states:
I have seen many cases of boys seduced, even by adult men, who although they apparently behaved like homosexuals were at the most pseudo-homosexuals; after puberty they showed no homosexual desires. In normal persons the heterosexual pattern is shaped long before puberty, at least in the subconsciousness <note>104.
This last observation is the decisive point:
By the time of puberty the real sexual tendency of the boy is already fixed. He may experiment, sometimes passionately and intensely, in various directions, but in the end he arrives where he belongs in accordance with his disposition. Whether this disposition is inborn or acquired is a question of no importance here, because, even if the disposition is acquired, it is definitive long before puberty, probably before the age of six, and according to Bleuler, even before the fourth year <note>105.
Here we are only discussing mature boys. Thus a heterosexual boy will not be "perverted" by relations with a paedophile any more than a homosexual boy can be "cured" by heterosexual intercourse performed during youth.
I quote now some striking examples from the literature to illustrate this thesis.
c. Some Case Stories
1. A boy of 14 is seduced by a servant girl. For a year he greatly enjoys regular intercourse with her. From age 15 his impulse is exclusively homophile <note>106.
2. An English boy of seven is kidnapped by Pacific islanders and trained to satisfy men orally. He does so for five years and after some time gets violent erections during the activity, a priapism lasting continuously for days. To rid himself of these erections he practices until he is supple enough to perform auto-fellatio. He marries at the age of 16. The spasmodic erections disappear when normal satisfaction becomes possible, and he begets children <note>107.
3. A boy is seduced by his teacher at the age of 14. He is delighted with this relationship and has, until age 21, very passionate sexual contacts with several adult men. He falls ardently in love with them but tries in vain to find harmony, security, and a steady relationship with them. He is disappointed to discover that these men apparently are chiefly moved by their desire for his handsome body and the sexual pleasure. He concludes that only a woman will be able to meet his needs and thereafter becomes exclusively heterosexual <note>108.
4. A child is judged at birth to be a girl and is raised as such, marrying at age 17. In the beginning she is completely satisfied by intercourse, but after a few years feelings of indifference become dominant, gradually changing to aversion. Her affection for her husband is undiminished, but during intercourse, fits of hatred and disgust gain the upper hand. Medical examination establishes that she is really a male with deformed genitals. Notwithstanding a life-long suggestion to the contrary, her/his heterosexuality asserts itself. This 17-year-old boy had fully enjoyed intercourse with a male person -- as so many normal boys do -- but once he attained adulthood he became heterophile <note>109.
5. A girl aged seven is persuaded by a 14-year-old boy to have intercourse. She relates:
"I believe that it hurt, but I was not afraid. I did it again with him two or three times. During the next five years I had intercourse with all the neighborhood boys and with all my cousins. They were all about my age or a bit older. I was crazy about having intercourse." This girl grew up to be a lesbian <note>110.
6. A case from French history, told by Guy Breton:
King Charles IX indulged in the most scandalous excesses, and together with his brother the Duke of Anjou (the future Henry III) and Henry of Navarre (the future Henry IV) he threw very enjoyable parties. Someone familiar with the court said:"I know that on certain occasions these fine gentlemen were served by stark naked women with whom they afterwards amused themselves. The Duke of Anjou usually picked someone from among his mother's charming ladies-in-waiting, as they were easily persuaded and not inclined to make a scandal because they had the permission of Catherine de Medici to allow themselves to be used by her sons.
Indeed, one of these ladies had initiated him when he was 15. This same lady also initiated Charles IX at age 16. According to the Queen Mother, the Duke of Anjou was 'a good stud.'
However, in later life he turned out to be homophile, and as King Henry III he surrounded himself with young men, his mignons [*]. When the king met a man, a page boy, or a soldier and was overcome by lust, he summoned two muscular mignons, who threw themselves upon their prey and held him in the right position." <note>111
[* French for 'darlings' - Ipce]
The American sexologist George W. Henry collected the case histories of 40 homophile males in his book Sex Variants <note>112. Of these, 34 also reported intercourse with women.
![]() | One subject performed his first intercourse at the age of 5, |
![]() | one at the age of 7, |
![]() | two at 8, |
![]() | two at 10, |
![]() | one at 13, and |
![]() | four at 17, |
but all finally became homophiles.
In his research Giese found among 392 homophiles no fewer than 203 subjects who also had heterosexual experiences <note>113 .
![]() | One did so at the age of 12, |
![]() | 23 between age 13 and 16, and |
![]() | 83 between 17 and 24. |
None of them ultimately became heterophile.
Finally, it may be observed as a well-known fact that most boys involved in male prostitution are and remain heterophiles <note>114 .
In the Jahrbuch fur sexuelle Zwischenstufen, van der Choven [*] reports that every Asian city is teeming with boys trained since childhood to be prostitutes through massage of their buttocks and enlargement of their anus with instruments <note>115.
[* Archivist's correction: von der Choven]
They are most in demand from the age of 12 to 16. When their beard appears they lose their value. Many become honorable citizens, found a family, and keep a harem.
Of Alcibiades, Socrates' favorite pupil, it was said by Diogenes Laertius that as a boy he had lured away the husbands from their wives and, as a young man, lured away the wives from their husbands <note>116.
d. The Facts Belie the Accusation
The widespread fear that boys will be turned into homophiles through sexual relations with a man is based upon an odd twist of reasoning. Is it not curious indeed that someone who considers himself heterosexual also views homosexual relations as so intensely pleasant that he believes that a boy, having once tasted the forbidden fruit, will henceforth and forevermore wish to repeat this treat? If the word "unnatural" is appropriate in any connection, then this view is unnatural!
Perhaps this opinion could still be defended when people as naive as Guy Laroche, the physician previously quoted, imagined homosexual experiences in boyhood to be quite exceptional. Today we are better informed. Kinsey established that about 60% of all boys had engaged in homosexual activities prior to puberty <note>117.
In the same study he quotes the findings of Ramsay, whose extensive research among pupils of secondary schools showed that 30% of them had pursued homosexual contacts to orgasm <note>118 .
Another researcher, Finger, arrived at the figure 27% <note>119.
In Germany, Hoffmann and Stern concluded that, among boys in secondary schools, homosexual activities are more common than heterosexual, because many of the boys were averse to going all the way with a girl <note>120.
These boys have quite normal feelings and their evolution is also perfectly normal. From statistics about schoolboys discovered in homosexual activities, boys 14-16 are most frequently involved; in the following year the incidence goes down, only to increase again from the age of 17 on. The younger boys are mostly passive; among the older are more who are active, but in the majority of cases the active partner was an adult.
Hirschfeld in Die Homosexualitäät quotes an expert who claimed that more than 50% of all Italian boys between the ages of 15 and 18 have sex with men <note>121.
Considering these statistics, it is impossible to claim that boys are turned into homophiles by paedophile relationships; if this were true then at least a third of all males would be homophiles. And that the life stories of so many homophiles include homosexual experiences during youth, well, what a surprise! They share this experience with the majority of men, though it cannot be said that it was this influence that made them homophiles.
e. What about Bisexual Boys?
What remains to be said is this: mankind is not to be divided into two groups, heterophiles and homophiles, because there are a variety of intermediates between them. Every human being has something of both; what matters is which one dominates. Now, it is evident that a boy in whom both tendencies are present with about equal force, might be pushed in the direction of homophilia through the influence of a pleasant paedophile relationship, while a heterophile evolution might also have been possible.
Some authors tend to see this as rather an advantage for society <note>122. They follow the same reasoning as Hans Rau developed regarding sadism in his book Die Grausamkeit (Cruelty). Having argued that an abnormal tendency can never be bred by seduction, Rau says:
It makes, of course, a big difference whether an abnormal feeling slumbers somewhere secretly in a human being and remains unconscious, or whether this feeling is stirred up and compels action. But even this awakening of a deviant impulse . . . cannot be considered a disaster. . . . It is much better for society if such a victim of heredity becomes conscious of his urges and thus is prevented from marrying, instead of leading an inconspicuous life and begetting children with a thoroughly perverse nature <note>123.
I disagree completely with this view! We know far too little about heredity, and especially about inherited sexual traits, to make such peremptory assessments. The existence of a homophile is, in our societies, made so difficult that it certainly should be considered unfortunate were a boy to be moved through relations with a paedophile to ignore his heterophile side and become preponderantly homophile.
But do such things really happen in practice? The evidence indicates that the real bisexual is usually not a person who at any given moment can perform intercourse with either a woman or a man. Rather, he is usually a person whose sexual impulse more or less requires him to alternate between the sexes <note>124.
Most probably, cases in which heterosexuality and homosexuality are nearly balanced are extremely rare; perhaps they are even purely theoretical. And apart from these extremely rare or even theoretical cases, the charge that the paedophile leads astray the sexual evolution of his young friend is untenable.
These arguments against paedophilia, at least, cannot be sustained. The real objections are to be found on quite a different plane.
14. Songs of Praise for Paedophilia
Not a few paedophiles look back with nostalgia upon the height of Greek civilization, when legislators and philosophers not only tolerated boy-love, but even extolled it. In some localities sexual intercourse with a boy was part of a religious ritual. Poems and stories treat boy-love as a custom; it was a recurrent theme in comedy; vases and dishes were decorated with -- at times highly realistic -- erotic images; sculptors preferred young naked males as models.
So open-minded were they towards boy-love that the sculptor Phidias, having created the great statue of Zeus for the temple of Olympia, added a small statue of his lover, the boy Pantarkes, beneath the throne of the god. On one of the divine fingers he engraved, in characters legible to every worshipper, "What a beautiful boy is this Pantarkes!" Near the terrace of the temple to Hermes on the island of Thera, where each September nude ephebes performed ritual dances (gymnopaideia), inscriptions in the rock give the names of boys and men, noting that the had their first sexual intercourse on this spot <note>125.
In the sixth century B.C., Athens' great legislator Solon advised boys to have relations with men as the most suitable means for them to obtain sexual satisfaction, by which means they could also gain adult friends as mentors and educators.
"Only a good boy-lover can be a good pedagogue," it was said at that time <note>126.
Athenian law allowed free citizens to have sex with boys as an honorable occupation; adult slaves were prohibited from doing the same, at least not with free-born boys <note>127. Boys who had won the love of a man were permitted to wear a robe of honor and were given the best seats at festivals. Plato observed in the Symposium that it was the best and most capable boys who liked to share their bed with a man, and in the Republic he awarded the most courageous warriors the right to embrace the nicest boys <note>128.
On Crete it was traditional for the boy to make a mock show of being kidnapped by his lover. The staged abduction was arranged with the boy's parents three days beforehand. It was a disgrace for the lover if the parents refused to collaborate and hid their son. But if the parents had no objection to the man, they only pretended to oppose the kidnapping.
The man and his young friend wandered about for two or three months, hunted together, and held banquets. At the end of the period, the boy returned to his parents with a big gift. Once home, the boy must either declare publicly that he had enjoyed the sexual intercourse with his lover or maintain that he had been raped and so demand punishment. It was a great disgrace for a boy if he was never abducted by a man <note>129.
Krauss, in The Sexual Life of the Japanese, reports the opinion of sober-minded experts:
"In those provinces where boy-love is common, people are more masculine and energetic. In regions where there is no paedophilia they are on the contrary softer, weaker, and more frequently debauched." <note>130
In all nations where paedophilia is part of the culture, its favorable influence is highly praised, as it was in Ancient Greece.
15. We Aren't Greeks
Nothing entitles us to use, without further consideration, such declarations as a justification for paedophile relationships in our present day world. We live in a society where paedophile relationships provoke intense reactions. This may well be wrong and unfair, but it is a fact. It certainly does color these relationships and may generally frustrate or repress the inherent benefits.
With his lack of experience and inability to see the situation in all its aspects, a boy enters into a relationship with an adult which is characterized by criminalization and prohibition, and the perpetual fear of discovery. Almost unavoidably this renders the whole affair somewhat unhealthy.
At this age is it then so terrible for the boy to do something which he must hide from his parents? One of the tasks of the pubertal male is attainment of independence, and so it is normal if he is no longer open towards his parents about all aspects of his life, especially the sexual. If parents insist on being informed about everything, at this age that would be meddlesome and unhealthy for the child. Stekel reports a case history in which the father fitted condoms onto his 15-year-old son and accompanied him to a brothel. No wonder this boy turned out to be completely impotent.
It is not the secrecy that is unhealthy, but the fear of the consequences of discovery. Some members of the Wolfenden Committee rightly observe that the young "victim" of paedophile relations is often more damaged by the agitation of his parents, which is typically disproportionate to the true importance of the events, and by the uproar surrounding the prosecution of the offender <note>131.
Hirschfeld notes in his Geschlechtskunde that the physical examination of the boy by the police and judge inflicts a much more severe and lasting psychic trauma on the boy than the fact that some adult touched him in a way which was not objectionable to him, and in which he routinely touched himself <note>132.
In The Netherlands, Ms. A.A. Schwartz, a police official with the Department for juvenile Affairs and a deputy juvenile judge, also mentioned the psychic trauma almost always inflicted by judicial interference on the minor testifying in a sexual abuse case <note>133.
The paedophile therefore exposes his young friend to a serious risk and brings him into an unhealthy atmosphere of fear and secrecy. This is often underscored by the location where such intimate relations occur.
With the 133 boys studied by Tolsma, the sexual activities in only 80 cases happened in quiet surroundings --
![]() | 59 in a room and |
![]() | 21 in bed. |
The remaining were:
![]() | 11 boys at a roadside stop; |
![]() | 9 in a warehouse; |
![]() | 7 in a park; |
![]() | 6 in a shed; |
![]() | 5 on the street; |
![]() | 3 cases each in a cabin and a boat; |
![]() | 2 cases each in a lavatory, on a porch, and in a public convenience, and |
![]() | one case each in a stable, a car and a railway compartment <note>134. |
Of course the situation is very different, more like those in Ancient Greece, if the parents tacitly or expressly consent to the relationship. There are, however, not so many fathers such as the one described by Pacificus Maximus in his fourth elegy, where a certain Etruscus brings his son to the schoolmaster and says,
"If you bed him down and use him, he will learn better." <note>135
Nevertheless, even in contemporary Holland [The Netherlands: Holland is a part of that state - Ipce], it happens that parents approve of the relationship between their son and a paedophile and recognize its benefits. Then the risk of discovery and the fear of exposure nearly disappear and the benefits blossom.
16. The Power of Physical Contact
I am speaking here about possibilities. It would certainly be hypocritical sentimentality to assume that every paedophile is always motivated by the highest pedagogical ideals towards his young friend. Many are simply bent on seeking their own pleasure with an attractive boy. But if he wants more and better things, then the man undoubtedly has a remarkable opportunity, because during adolescence physical contact has such an enormous power and influence over the boy. Especially the person who engages in sex with him has a powerful influence over him. When people reproached Socrates for not keeping young Alcibiades under better control, the wise man replied,
"I can only guide the boy by his ears and so I cannot compete with the man who also caresses his tongue and genitals."
A striking case of bonding through sexual contact is presented by Stekel. A boy of 13 developed a violent hatred for his stepfather, whose attempts to win the boy's affection failed repeatedly. By chance, they had to share a bed during a trip. When lights were out, the man began to play with the boy's penis, and fully satisfied him. From that night forward, the boy's hatred was replaced by great affection <note>136.
Several individuals with wide experience in this field advance the thesis that boys who have an enduring relationship of this kind with a truly affectionate and caring adult grow through the adolescent years in a remarkably harmonious way, without the usual tempestuousness and misery of maturation. While we lack sufficient data to prove this theory, there is good reason to think that it is correct. Giese mentions a man who, for a period of a year, engaged in sexual activities with a 15-year-old student 6 to 8 times a month. He reports that the boy's grades improved and that he even stopped being ill-mannered <note>137.
17. Sexual Openness
An important factor in bringing about these changes is undoubtedly the sexual openness which the boy enjoys, and which, for the most part, is out of the question for most. In considering the traumas inflicted by adults upon the sexual development of boys, sex with a paedophile should not be the foremost cause. Rather, nothing confuses the young person more about his sexuality than the perplexity and confusion brought to it by well-meaning parents, educators, and other adults, no sooner than the subject is broached. Such attitudes cause him to equate sexuality with smut; he becomes ashamed of his unquenchable thirst for it, and feels compelled to pursue it in complete secrecy. Many pubertal tantrums should probably be seen as deflected expressions of frustrations and unnatural tensions.
In Adolescent Development, Hurlock mentions the anguish that physical development causes for many boys.
The boy is afraid that his penis, which has grown rapidly in a short space of time, will show through his clothing. Furthermore, erection frequently occurs without his volition and this disturbs him. Nocturnal emissions, which leave a tell-tale stain on his pyjamas or bed-clothes, frighten and shame him. But if he does not have frequent discharges through nocturnal emissions, tension develops and causes discomfort <note>138.
No wonder that so many boys at this age are difficult and restless and that their behavior is unpredictable. Shakespeare called boys and women sheep of the same color: changeable, longing and liking, proud, fantastical, conformist, shallow, inconstant, full of fears, full of smiles <note>139.
When a boy has a friendship with an adult friend who makes no secret of his sexuality, all reticence regarding sexuality is quickly dropped. Even to those adults he truly loves and trusts, a boy will never tell one percent of what he tells the man with whom he is having a physical relationship. With everyone else, he feels, suspects, or fears rejection, even if the person approaches him with great understanding.
At this age, when nothing is so important as the physical, only physical contact can break down isolation completely. If somebody really wants to be open towards another person, he must feel certain of being accepted for what he is. In relations with a paedophile the boy enjoys the certainty of having found an adult who accepts and appreciates him completely, including his sexual desires and their concrete expression. He can talk about the secrets of his heart, express his anguish, pose his burning questions, and freely tell of his experiments and adventures.
Several paedophiles told me similar stories, and two of them showed me their journals detailing their experiences with boys. What they heard from well-regarded errand boys and clerks, pleasant high school pupils with a good reputation, sturdy football players, and strapping boy scouts about their opinions and experiences would leave most parents, teachers, and authorities in a state of shock. Often it is strikingly similar to the confidential observations of neglected youths.
18. Good and Bad Possibilities
It is not only the boy's need for an uninhibited discussion of sexual matters with an older and more experienced friend that is satisfied in a paedophile relationship, but it is also his burning curiosity. Kinsey observes that boys show a much stronger interest in the structure and functioning of the mature male sexual organ than most adults would believe <note>140. Frequently, such curiosity drives boys to make sexual contacts with adult males <note>141. Most boys, particularly younger ones, find it fascinating to observe an adult's sexual activities.
I have tried throughout this work to state things as facts. If a boy is completely open about sexuality with a man, shares with him physically and spiritually his sexual life, and is liberated from obsessive questions and desires, it will put him at ease and save him from many pubertal miseries. But this is not necessarily to say that it is a good thing. It demonstrates the enormous power the paedophile has over the boy, but whether this power is ultimately a salutary or an unfavorable influence on the youth depends entirely on the personality of the paedophile.
The boy will certainly take as his example the image of adult sexuality he experiences in his relationship. The openness of the relationship means that he will be easily influenced. Years of sex with a paedophile will not make a homosexual of a heterosexual boy, but he may learn from a paedophile that all that matters about sexuality is lust and pleasure, and so he may develop into a Don Juan or Casanova. By his example and influence a paedophile may corrupt a boy irreparably, and indeed this sometimes happens; it would surely be hypocritical to deny this.
However, we must also reject the opinion that such corruption is the inevitable result of every paedophile relationship, as is so frequently claimed. This is refuted by the fact that intercourse with an older friend belongs to the finest early memories of many an eminent and prominent man. One university graduate, married and father of several children, an important public functionary, who is very religious and of strong opinions and moral convictions, still receives with great cordiality and affection the visits of his now elderly friend, with whom he had a sexual relationship from his 14th to his 17th year. This is not at all exceptional <note>142.
Likewise, it is not unusual for a boy who is becoming more interested in girls and feeling he is getting too old for such a relationship to introduce a younger brother to take his place by the side of his adult friend. He wants to help his friend while also securing for his brother the same advantages he has enjoyed.
An example is also to be found in Giese's book <note>143. A company director, aged 40, had a relationship with a mechanic, then 22, which had lasted for six years. The man is married and had had heterosexual intercourse for 20 years. They were introduced by the mechanic's older brother, who had a similar relationship with this man until his marriage. The director's wife and the parents of the two young men are fully aware of the nature of the relationship. They have sex twice a week, which is an important but not the most significant part of the relationship.
19. Transitory Nature of Paedophile Relationships
With this last case story we also touch upon a very delicate point: the transitory nature of the relationship.
From the beginning it is clear that, for the paedophile, the beloved boy will eventually lose his erotic attraction. The turning point is commonly the appearance of the beard. Even if the original erotic relationship is then frequently transformed into a lasting, non-sexual friendship, the situation changes fundamentally. Does this not rule out a true love relationship?
Taken objectively, this undoubtedly marks the relationship as somehow incomplete, but we must remember that love is blind to time and place and simply desires the other as he now is. The paedophile seeks, and if he is lucky will find, "the eternal boy" in his friend. It is noteworthy that the word most often used by the Greeks to denote the beloved boy was simply ta paidika, literally, "the boy-like." <note>144
The image of the man who is later to grow from this lad hardly arises in the paedophile's mind: he loves what is boy-like. Perhaps the boy sees the real situation more clearly than the man, for the boy's mind is much more directed towards his becoming an adult. This may be precisely what makes possible the complete surrender of the heterosexual boy in paedophile intercourse: more or less consciously, he understands this to be a transitory phase, a form of sexuality only fitting to this particular age. His body is now attractive in the man's eyes and contact with a man can still excite his highest pleasure. He may very well surrender himself to these feelings because his body will lose its attraction and he will lose his ability to enjoy himself in this way, but by then he will be ready for heterosexual activity, for which he knows he is still too young.
This might also explain the curious fact that heterophile boys are usually much more easily involved in relations with a paedophile than the predominantly homophile ones. In the life stories of homophiles it is often striking to observe the strength and emotion with which they had opposed approaches by a paedophile <note>145.
It seems they knew intuitively that for them homosexual contact would have a much more decisive, lasting, and deeper significance than for their heterophile peers.
For instance, the American homophile author Sherwood Anderson told in his autobiography how he had worked at a race track in Chicago when he was 16. One night he returned from work drenched to the skin. He undressed completely and lay down in the straw covered with just a blanket. He had hardly fallen asleep when some older colleagues returned very drunk; they pulled his blanket from him and, seeing him stark naked, wanted to rape him, "Don't be afraid, we won't hurt you." In panic he fled stark naked across the fields until he found shelter in a sheepfold. He returned the next day in his birthday suit to the mocking laughter of all the stable boys. He resigned immediately <note>146.
![]() | In De homosexueelen, Dr. B.J. Stokvis collected a number of autobiographies <note>147. There are several accounts of homophile boys feeling anguish when approached by a man. |
![]() | Berg and Krich tell the story of a 16-year-old, grabbed by a man in a lavatory, who fled in terror. But he returned repeatedly to the spot, hoping that the opportunity would present itself again. |
![]() |
Legludic rightly says that nothing is as unpredictable
as a boy's reactions when he realizes that a man is
approaching him sexually <note>148. |
Statistical
data makes it apparent that on average homophile boys
arrive later at homosexual relations than heterophile
ones.
Among 392 homophiles examined by Giese, their age at the first homosexual activity was as shown in Table 1 <note>149. |
|
||||||||||||||||
The age at which a boy becomes definitely conscious
of being a homophile is also rather high.
Giese cites the following statistics, as shown here in Table 2 <note>150. |
|
20. Distinction between Love and Sexuality
One of the tasks to be accomplished during puberty and adolescence is the integration of sexuality and love. Usually, in a boy just past puberty, they are separate. He may adore a girl but feels he would debase her by desiring her sexually. During masturbation he fantasizes about a girl who excites him but whom he does not venerate.
The integration of sexuality into the love life, ultimately rendering sexual intimacy the most profound expression of love, should occur gradually over several years. According to experts, a man accomplishes this completely only in a successful marriage, and even then not immediately <note>151.
However, many succeed only partially and some not at all. These are men who, for instance, are potent with a prostitute but cannot get an erection with the woman they love. In the depths of their being they never escaped the boyish notion that sexual activities are essentially dirty.
Authorities on puberty agree that it may be very dangerous for the psychic evolution of a boy if this is rushed. If a 15-year-old, impelled purely by his sexual desire, has intercourse with a girl, this does not impede the healthy growth of his love life. However, matters become very dubious if he does so with a girl whom he really loves; being immature it is harder for him to link love and sex.
The paedophile who does not understand and respect this may distort something in the boy. When the man is bent on expressing through sex his deep affection for the boy, it may at times trouble him to see his young friend generally so little interested in tender foreplay. The boy may unexpectedly, and sometimes in very coarse words, insist on the sexual act, without any preparation or, frequently, engaging in it through rough-housing. It all takes place in an atmosphere of play and laughter, even if the final orgasm is usually experienced in deepest earnest.
Hirschfeld claims that healthy peasant boys in Austria are ready for relations with a paedophile, provided they are approached tactfully <note>152.
The paedophile should abstain from acting like a lover, for this makes them shy. The best manner is not to say anything and just act like a good comrade. In a village with no more than 3000 inhabitants a dentist won more than fifty of the handsomest boys by his hospitality and musical talent. The boys competed to gain his favor and hardly ever asked for money, or even refused it when offered. They abandoned themselves with passion.
Another paedophile was acquainted with a farmer who had three sons aged 14, 16 and 18, all sleeping in the same room. When he visited them, each boy wanted him to share his bed. They knew full well what the others were after. What Hirschfeld says may be applied to boys in general:
![]() | friendship draws them towards a paedophile, |
![]() | romantic love makes them shy away. |
21. It Is Still Real Love?
If we compare paedophilia with the idealized abandonment in love between husband and wife or between homosexual adults there is certainly something lacking. We must concede this, even while refraining from asking how many adult couples actually attain this ideal unity. But is this sufficient reason to deny the possibility of a real love relationship between man and boy? Outsiders often declare that they cannot imagine it; adults and non-adults are too dissimilar, so real mutual love would be impossible.
Table 3
-----------------------------
Age (Years) Number of Boys
-----------------------------
11 or younger 64
12 51
13 38
14 53
15 52
16 46
17 29
18 26
19 9
20 or older 23
-----------------------------
Perhaps it is true here, as it so often is in human emotions, that a person must experience something himself in order to understand it. Many paedophiles are convinced that their love is real, and often the boy, having matured into an adult, will look back and affirm that what he felt for the man was real love. Boyish love, perhaps, expressed in boyish ways, but no less real for all that!
We must not forget that maturity means much more than just the capacity to produce sperm. Maturity expands the capacity to love. At puberty, the capacity to be impressed by beauty in art and nature grows and becomes more complex, as does the faculty to enter into a true encounter with another human being, to love.
But hardly anyone aware of the actual data
concerning the sexual life of boys can doubt that this
age is also characterized by intense lust. We may apply
to boys an observation by Fritz Leist, a well-known
author on marriage relations, that lust is an expression
of a much deeper desire for an all-embracing love. In Giese's research it is certainly striking that the first deep affection for someone of the same sex comes so much earlier than the awareness of a homophile inclination (see Table 2, above) <note>153. Deep affection for another male manifested itself as shown in Table 3. |
|
Placzek quotes one of his correspondents as follows:
A look at homosexual literature and art, as well as consideration of reality, shows us that in boy love the same eternal feelings may blossom as in normal love. With the same strength we also find desire, fidelity, devotion, and the willingness to sacrifice. And just as much here as there, overwhelming feelings urge performance of the sexual act as their ultimate completion <note>154.
Placzek advises, albeit for other reasons, legalization of sexual activities with boys of 14 and over.
Plato's Socrates describes the boundless joy that overcomes a man as he looks at the beautiful body of his young friend. Speaking of the boy, Socrates says:
He no longer feels sad when his older friend is with him; he also feels desire when his friend is far away. For he carries within himself the shadow of love, which is love in return.
Now, the boy may say and believe that this is not love but friendship, but meanwhile his desire is just as strong, though perhaps not felt as often, to see him, to touch him, to embrace him, and to share his bed. And this he shortly does, as might be expected.
As they he together, the man's ungovernable horse starts to bother his owner, demanding a little bit of pleasure for all his trouble. The little horse of the beloved boy still has nothing to say, but filled with a vague, rutting desire he embraces his lover, kissing and caressing him as his best friend. They share a bed, and he is quite willing not to refuse his body and to give in to his friend if he asks for it <note>155.
The sexually mature boy is capable of real love, just as he is able to create real art and be truly religious. Of course, everything should continue to grow and ripen, but the heart of the matter is already present.
22. Image of the Adult
It might be said that, precisely because the boy is growing and ripening, the paedophile relationship is also capable of causing terrible harm. At the age at which a boy starts to become independent from his parents, but at which he is not really capable of being independent, he experiences love from a man. This is enormously important to him.
Of course, I am putting the case as favorably as possible. For it may be that the boy does not experience the man's attitude as loving at all. The boy may be aware of exercising through his physical charms a mysterious, all-encompassing power over the man. This situation obviously may have disastrous effects on pedagogy.
But assume that the boy finds real love in the man. Then he clings to him; his need for guidance and affection is satisfied; his craving for attention, his need for someone to take him seriously, are abundantly fulfilled. To the heterophile, the pubertal boy generally appears as a human being at his most disagreeable and unattractive. Consequently, a boy is accustomed to being snapped at by adults, to being pushed aside, and to being ordered about. He is the last to be considered.
Then, all of a sudden, he meets a man who finds him important, admires his accomplishments and his body. He may freely express his sexuality, which he must hide from all other adults. Sexual gratification is more satisfying with his friend than lone masturbation, and at the same time much less risky than with a girl, where pregnancy and a commitment he is not ready to make may threaten him.
Is it then a surprise if the boy is inspired by his adult friend and that the paedophile becomes for the boy the ideal adult, the mentor, a model? This is fine when the paedophile really is a good example. But how often is this not the case?
In the International Journal of Psychiatry, S. Toobert and E.S. Jones sketch a picture of the typical paedophile "offender" from the records of 120 men examined <note>156.
According to them, the characteristic paedophile is
![]() | a sexually unsatisfied individual |
![]() | with strong religious interests |
![]() | who relates badly to others, |
![]() | has a sense of guilt, and |
![]() | is excessively sensitive to the judgment of others. |
His weakness and low self-esteem find a resolution, the authors believe, by identifying with the physically weak and emotionally uncorrupted child.
Even if these authors are describing men who occupy themselves more with immature children than with mature boys, we may ask whether the paedophiles I am discussing here do not frequently show similar traits.
If it is true that many homophiles can only arrive with difficulty or not at all at establishing a deep "existential" contact with a fellow human being, then it seems reasonable to suppose, from a psychological perspective, that such traits are present to a much greater degree in males who can only abandon themselves to a non-adult.
One might say that the paedophile seems to be someone who drops his social reserve, and abandons himself body and soul to his partner, when he is sure that as the senior partner he can dominate the boy. Is not this need to dominate, even if unconscious, the basis for many homophiles' and paedophiles' preference for less educated, working class friends?
23. Men with Many Boys
Many paedophiles who share this will to dominate and prefer the many to the one, despite their best intentions, will not cut the ideal figure suited for the best moral formation of a boy. However, there are certainly other paedophiles who are excellent pedagogues, though it is impossible to ascertain their number. There is truth in the saying: every good educator must be part paedophile. And further, no one would become a youth leader unless he, consciously or unconsciously, has paedophile urges.
But the inability to establish deeper contacts makes many men, heterosexuals and homosexuals, flit from partner to partner, from adventure to adventure, seeking only sexual experiences.
Kinsey says:
In both heterosexual and homosexual relationships, promiscuity may depend, in many instances, upon the male's anticipation of variation in the genital anatomy of the partner, in the techniques which may be used during the contacts, and in the physical responses of the new partner. . . .
Male promiscuity often depends upon the satisfactions that may be secured from the pursuit and successful attainment of a new partner. There are some heterosexual males, and an even larger proportion of the homosexual males, who may limit themselves to a single contact with any single partner. Once having demonstrated their capacities to effect sexual relations with the particular individual, they prefer to turn to the pursuit of the next partner <note>157.
In the study by Kinsey of males who had homosexual
relationships, the number of partners is shown in Table
4.
There are reasons to suppose this tendency to promiscuity to be rather common, especially in paedophiles. A boy frequenting such a man may well conclude that he is only one in a series and that the caresses he gets today will be given tomorrow with equal passion to another youth. Generally, a heterophile boy does not object to this, and will even think it understandable, because for him the sexual contact belongs to the world of play and is not yet linked to a loving union. |
|
But the great risk is that the boy may acquire a distorted image of adult sexuality and remain fixed in this phase of mental immaturity in which the genitals are merely organs to experience lust, and not instruments for uniting in love. The number of boys with whom a single paedophile may have relations during a rather short period may amount to a number nearly unbelievable to outsiders, and easily add up to tens or even hundreds <note>158.
The layman is tempted to see this as impossible, because he greatly underestimates the willingness of boys to engage in sex. He expects to find his own horror of paedophilia in every healthy, spirited boy and thinks that only weak or morally corrupted boys will be inclined to do such things. Experience shows that this is absolutely not true and that boys who do not respond to a paedophile's approach might be the exception rather than the rule.
The criminal statistics regarding paedophiles give no indication of the number of contacts per adult.
In The Netherlands in 1956,
![]() | 124 adult males were sentenced for offenses against section 248 bis of the Penal Code, dealing with activities between men and boys aged 16 to 21, and |
![]() | 1034 for offenses against section 247, dealing with activities committed with both boys and girls under 16. |
In the Dutch population of 11,000,000 (as of 1960), the number of adult males under age 65 can be estimated as 3,030,000. According to Kinsey, the average number of orgasms for a man during the course of a week is 2.74 <note>159. This yields a total of 8,302,200 male orgasms per week and 431,714,400 orgasms per year. Of these, 6.3% or 27,198,000 are due to homosexual contacts (Kinsey's ratio) <note>160.
Hirschfeld's research indicated that 45% of homosexual relationships are paedophile, and this would account for 12,239,000 male orgasms <note>161.
Thus, in the course of a year, more than twelve million adult male orgasms arise from sexual contact with a boy, more than 34,000 times daily. This figure might be too high because there is more restraint on paedophile contacts than in relations between adults. On the other hand, if we consider that often only the boy attains orgasm and furthermore that sexual activities such as caressing a knee, patting the buttocks, or a kiss may be deemed punishable by the courts, then it appears that the number of illegal activities committed by paedophiles with boys during the course of one year in The Netherlands may even amount to several times these twelve million.
Applying Kinsey's data to The Netherlands, there would be over 135,000 boys between 15 and 19 years old who were brought to orgasm by homosexual activities <note>162.
Not all of these contacts would be with paedophile adults; age-mates are also among the partners. It is clear that these figures are open to criticism; the actual figures may be lower or much higher. It is the intention of these calculations only to demonstrate the scale of what we are considering. We may in any case be sure that the police are informed of only a small fraction of the occurrences, as the police criminologist C.N. Peyster conjectures <note>163.
Our initial surprise at these high figures soon disappears if we realize that paedophilia is certainly not unnatural in the sense of colliding with the nature of the sexually mature boy; rather the opposite. Not only in his physical appearance but also in his erotic feelings, the boy who has just reached sexual maturity has female traits. It is not unreasonable to discuss a bisexual phase. The sexual impulse is often still more or less passive and receptive to an active, typically male, approach.
Havelock Ellis notes that in homosexual relationships there is generally a clear preference for a strongly contrasting partner: the more feminine types seek the more virile ones -- intellectuals looking for workmen, the older looking for the younger, and boys or adolescents preferring relations with adult men to those with age-mates <note>164.
The English Wolfenden Report states that among 524 boys under sixteen who were complainants in criminal proceedings against paedophiles, only 42% objected to, or showed any indignation for, what the paedophile did to them <note>165.
Obviously, a considerable number of boys, subjected to pressure by policemen, judges, and parents, will be tempted to feign indignation and to pretend that everything happened against their will; the real percentage of the truly offended may be much lower.
A student giving extra lessons to secondary school pupils once told me that he had met, in the course of five years, only one boy among a hundred who was unwilling to be masturbated by him, and that boy, aged 17, explained his unwillingness by the fact that he already had intercourse with a girl.
It is also not unusual for the boy to take the initiative. Dr. B.J. Stokvis quotes an article by Amsterdam police officer J. van Opijnen in the police journal, De Politiebode,
"It is the general opinion that the minors are the victims, but experience has taught us that very frequently the younger person seduced the older one." <note>166
Among the 393 subjects of Giese's research there were 300 who had their first homosexual contact before they were 21.
![]() | Only 84 of them had been "seduced"; |
![]() | 81 took the initiative themselves and in the remaining |
![]() | 135 cases the initiative came from both partners equally <note>167. |
In the same study by Giese, the director of a reformatory reports on his first contact with a 16-year-old schoolboy:
"My young partner undressed in my presence and then stood in front of me with an erection. Thus he offered me his friendship." <note>168
In a most characteristic way the French author Jean Genet described such a scene in his Funeral Rites, a book dedicated to the memory of his friend Jean, killed fighting the Germans during the liberation of Paris in 1944. When Genet first met him, Jean was 16. From other details it is clear that Jean was a heterophile boy who later had contacts with women. Jean understood quite well that Genet desired him, but he had never given in.
One night he came to visit Genet, who invited him to stay. The boy hesitated and said, "You're going to bother me if I stay over." Genet promised not to do so. But in the ensuing conversation, Genet felt clearly that Jean not only intended to stay, but also to have sex with him, to abandon himself to his friend. When Jean had undressed and climbed into Genet's bed, he already had an erection. "You promised not to trouble me, but suppose I allowed it today?" And after the act, the boy declared, "I love you even more than before." <note>169.
24. The Nature of the Sexual Contact
If one remembers that a normal boy is still open to expressing all kinds of sexual behavior, and gradually becomes oriented exclusively towards girls, it is easier to understand the situation.
In any case, we distort reality by imagining that boys only more or less unwillingly lend themselves to sexual activities with a man. The kind of activity the man desires may, however, be important.
In Athenian Greece, for example, nearly all of the men involved themselves in boy-love; the majority of them were heterosexual. In all times and places where this is the case
(that is, among heterophile soldiers, sailors, prisoners, and men living in overseas colonies who have intercourse with boys because women are absent),
the usual practice is that which most closely imitates coitus, namely the insertion by the man of his penis in the anus or between the compressed thighs of the boy.
The Greeks called the adult lover eispneles, the "inspirator," as they were convinced that he implanted the good and the noble into the receptive soul of the boy not only through his pedagogy but also implanted his virility, soul, and spirit through insemination <note>170.
In sexual activities between homophiles, anal and interfemoral intercourse may be much less common.
Lenz, for example, concludes that anal intercourse
![]() | between men is less frequently performed (20%) than |
![]() | between men and women (25% of the cases) <note>171. |
Oral contacts also are more frequent in heterosexual intercourse (42-45% of the cases).
According to Hirschfeld,
![]() | only 8% of homosexual intercourse is performed anally, |
![]() | against 12% interfemoral, |
![]() | 40% oral, and |
![]() | 40% manual activities <note>172 . |
Redhardt was even told by boy prostitutes that real homophiles only use their hands and that those insisting on other practices were always bisexual <note>173.
However this may be, in any case anal intercourse is very unusual in contemporary paedophile relationships.
Tolsma did not find a single case in his study of 133 subjects <note>174. The erotic practices he found were:
![]() | in 42.1% mutual masturbation, |
![]() | in 22.5% the man only touched the boy's body, |
![]() | in 21% the boy was masturbated by the man; |
![]() | in 1.5% the man was masturbated by the boy; |
![]() | in 6.8% interfemoral intercourse; |
![]() | in 11.3% oral contacts. |
![]() | The remaining 9% consisted of sado-masochistic practices. |
A heterophile readily permits himself to be masturbated by another male, because this is often merely a welcome variation to what he is accustomed to doing by himself, and so it is not especially remarkable to him. He is also willing to permit a man to perform oral or interfemoral sex. To the contrary, the suggestion of other practices frequently meets with strong resistance: taking a man's penis in his mouth is revolting; receptive anal intercourse is thought to hurt, and often does hurt considerably.
(However, especially at the time of puberty, a number of boys can be brought to orgasm by anal intercourse.)
We might suppose that boys who are by nature inclined to homophilia would be more willing to participate in more extreme practices.
Some insight is provided by George W. Henry who collected the youthful experiences of forty homophiles in Sex Variants <note>175. Tables 5 through 8 summarize his findings.
Table 5: Mutual Masturbation |
Table 6: Interfemoral Intercourse |
|||||
By a boy aged | With a boy | With a man over 19 y. | By a boy aged | With a boy | With a man over 19 y. | |
12 | 10 | 0 | 12 | 1 | 0 | |
13 | 8 | 2 | 13 | 0 | 0 | |
14 | 8 | 4 | 14 | 1 | 2 | |
15 | 5 | 5 | 15 | 1 | 1 | |
16 | 3 | 3 | 16 | 1 | 1 | |
17 | 2 | 5 | 17 | 2 | 1 | |
18 | 1 | 4 | 18 | 1 | 1 | |
Total | 37 | 23 | Total | 6 | 6 |
Table 7: Oral Intercourse |
||||
By a boy aged | With another boy | With someone over 19 | ||
Active | Passive | Active | Passive | |
12 | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 |
13 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 5 |
14 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 2 |
15 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 5 |
16 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 3 |
17 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 10 |
18 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 9 |
Table 8: Anal Intercourse |
||||
By a boy aged | With another boy | With someone over 19 | ||
Active | Passive | Active | Passive | |
12 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
13 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 3 |
14 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 3 |
15 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 4 |
16 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 5 |
17 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 5 |
18 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 1 |
25. Inconsistency of the Boy's Sexual Drive
The inconsistency of the sexual impulse in boys, even those whose later evolution is normal, sometimes drives them to have intercourse with both female and male partners during the same period. The visit of the beloved boy to a girl, sometimes with the consent of his lover but usually to his great displeasure, is a well-known theme in Greek and Roman poetry.
A typical example, involving a 48-year-old merchant, is also to be found in Giese's study <note>176.
When this man was 11 years old and not yet sexually mature, his 14-year-old brother began to have anal intercourse with him. This continued regularly for two or three years. He submitted to this without giving it much thought and considered it
" . . . an amusing game. I always teased him by tensing my muscles. I found it more agreeable than disagreeable."
When he was 13, a 20-year-old soldier billeted in his family's home forced the boy to masturbate him.
Shortly thereafter a paedophile accosted him in the street and they practiced mutual masturbation. He experienced his first orgasm and went several times, on his own initiative, to visit the man "who had aroused this delightful feeling."
He finally discovered that he could arouse himself and stopped visiting the man. He was 16 when he met a 30-year-old paedophile with whom he permitted anal intercourse. This relationship continued for two to three years.
He meanwhile began, at age 17, a sexual relationship with his 34-year-old female teacher, which continued for four years. Intercourse with the paedophile continued until he was 19; after the age of 21 he had intercourse exclusively with women. He considered it a welcome supplement to his heterosexual relations, which he could not enjoy as frequently as he desired. His last homosexual contact was at age 22. Some males exude a mysterious attraction, and boys literally run after them, forcing themselves upon them.
A correspondent of Giese reported:
Curiously, as a young man, it often happened to me that boys fell madly in love with me, had nervous complaints when I left their homes, cried, took my pillow into their bed, and were only to be completely soothed when I caressed and kissed them. . . .
Later in the East I had a chance to have boys as servants. To my surprise, they all assumed I would have sexual intercourse with them, mostly in the mouth. Then, too, this rather mysterious attraction I exerted on boys and adolescents revealed itself. An extraordinarily handsome boy came to visit me and begged to become my servant. He did <note>177.
All in all, this man had relations with about sixty boys.
In many paedophile friendships in which the boy later evolves into a completely heterophile individual, once the contact is established, it is the boy who repeatedly solicits the intimacies.
26. The Danger of Generosity
Hirschfeld enumerates the man's kindness, willingness to give someone pleasure, friendship, sympathy, gratefulness, and affection as frequent motives for a boy to enter into a paedophile relationship <note>178.
I believe sexual curiosity and especially the flattery demonstrated by the intense interest of the adult also play an important role. Regrettably there is often yet another factor, one which is a dark aspect in many paedophile relations: the material advantages to the boy.
In comparison to his young friend, the man is not only stronger and wiser, but also usually has much more money at his disposal. In giving presents and paying for treats it is, of course, the man who gives and the boy who receives.
This may well remain innocent and pleasant to both, but with surprising ease an element of prostitution may, consciously or unconsciously, introduce itself. Particularly when a boy knows, or suspects, that a man also does the same things with other boys, and the more so if the man clearly expresses a desire for physical contact, the boy begins to feel he should be paid for his sexual favors. It is quite possible that the man does not intend this at all and only wants to please his young friend. But the young friend sees it differently.
Even in the oldest Greek and Latin poems we hear the bitter complaint of boy-lovers that boys have been corrupted by exaggerated generosity and so have learned to exploit their erotic charms. Thus we read in the Anthologia Graeca:
"In former times boys could be made happy with small gifts: a bird they could play with, dice, a pretty ball. Today they ask for more: hard cash and fine clothes. Please, give them other things if you really love boys!" <note>179
There is also an eloquent scene in a play by Aristophanes (444-385 BC):
Karion: The boys no longer do this kind of thing to please their man friend, but to get money out of them.
Chremylos: That's only the boys who sell themselves, but there are also the better ones who don't accept money.
K. What do they want then?
C: One wants a couple of hounds, the other a fine horse.
K: Perhaps they are ashamed to actually accept money, but in truth they hide their low character behind fancy demands <note>180.
Of course only a small minority of boys openly prostitute themselves and make themselves available to any man for a fixed sum.
On the island of Pantellaria
where the Italian police interns troublemakers, the
village boys pursue the exiles, calling, "For one
lira I'll milk you." <note>181
In Naples even
today (1960), boys of ten and older accost foreigners in
the street, and sometimes ask outright, "Do you
want to have me?"
Such things may even still happen in The Netherlands. In his book Sexuele Misdadigheid, Professor E.A.D.A. Carp relates the story of a 36-year-old man who had always successfully fought his paedophile tendencies until he met a 12-year-old boy in a public lavatory, who exposed his penis to him, and asked, "Will you jack me off for ten cents?" He then masturbated the boy <note>182.
Even rougher tales are told about New York, where, according to an expert, it is easier for a man to get a boy than a girl, and where, according to another author, many secondary-school pupils "earn" their expensive sporting equipment from paedophiles <note>183.
Worse possibilities also exist. Tardieu mentions a husband who employed his wife to seduce boys in order to abuse them himself afterwards <note>184.
This recalls a similar episode from Apuleius' "Golden Asse," in the version rendered by Boccaccio in his Decameron.
Hoffmann and Stern mention a man who offered a boy the chance to visit his home and have intercourse with a prostitute, so that he might abuse the boy immediately afterwards <note>185.
Late at night, the director of a boarding school used to fetch a boy from the dormitory to his room, offer him a glass of beer, and masturbate or penetrate him anally. He used his authority to persuade the boys, and rewarded their willingness with good grades.
These are extreme cases. In general there is a friendly fulfillment of desires and interests which the boys cannot adequately satisfy at school or at home. Many a boy is more or less willing to "earn" a treat -- a film, a trip with the car, or a boat trip -- through granting sexual favors, which also give him a certain pleasure, especially in the beginning. In this way his sexual life takes a questionable direction, and there is the risk that he will continue physical relations with a man even after his desire has turned entirely to girls, solely for the benefit of the material rewards.
Adolf Brand, a paedophile German poet, speaks quite openly in his "Inseln des Eros" about this curious combination of candy and love:
Island of Eros
Always glad
Joyful, joyful!
Take off your coat, my boy,
Out of your trousers!You may sneak around
With that sweet tooth of yours
And fill your empty pockets
With chocolates and cakes;Hurry up, you wild lout
And don't laugh, you rascal!
Your looks, your curls
Would drive gods to a frenzy!Off with your clothes! Handsome lad,
All fire and motion!
From your eyebrows to your knee
The least movement is graceful!Every line a mystery
Every dimple a question mark.
Put your arm across my shoulder,
So I can carry you to bed!Your member is shining,
Glowing like a pale rose
Under your white shirt,
Pure as a dove.You drop from the sofa,
Nestle like an Adonis
Upon the soft purple carpet,
Your sweet charms like green ivy wind round me;Drunk and hot as from Falerian wine
With erring hands,
I silently strip off your shirt,
From your hips, tender as lilies.Now you are uncovered, lovely miracle --
Bashful, you're warding off my desire;
Exultant I embrace.Blissful and profoundly anxious,
Alluring, you tremble with lust.
And from my mouth
You steal sweet gifts with yours --I'm kissing, kissing you tenderly,
My lovely boy.
<note>186
Conclusion
The purpose of this study was to bring to light various aspects of paedophilia, and to point out how difficult a phenomenon it is to assess. It must again be stressed that before we are able to discuss the moral aspects, it is necessary to agree on both the circumstances of paedophile relationships and the principles of sexual ethics as a whole. That is still a long way off.
Aside from the question of whether or not sexual activities between boys and men will ever win ethical acceptance, I believe, as expressed in the preceding pages, that paedophile relationships do exist which are largely or wholly lacking in favorable aspects and therefore destined to exert a bad influence on the boy. But I also believe that the importance of harm is exaggerated, and the bad effects very often are not the result of the usually mentioned causes.
It has surely been proven by various experts, from ancient Greece onwards, that there are paedophile sexual relationships which either totally, or almost totally, do no harm. If it becomes possible to accept these ethically as positive relationships or at least, making an analogy with pubertal masturbation, as a more or less harmless practice, then it is also possible to argue that they could be a source of happiness and benefit to both man and boy. I do not presume to answer the questions I have raised, or even to suggest the answers. I only hope that I have succeeded in opening the discussion.