Pederasty
Encyclopedia
Pederasty or paederasty (icon, UK) is an intimate relationship between an adult and an adolescent boy outside his immediate family. The word pederasty derives from Greek "love of boys", a compound derived from (pais) "child, boy" and (erastēs) "lover".
Historically, pederasty has existed as a variety of customs and practices within different cultures. The status of pederasty has changed over the course of history; at times it has been considered an ideal, and at other times a crime.
In European history, its most structured cultural manifestation was Athenian pederasty
, which became most prominent in the 6th century BCE
. Greek pederasty's various forms were the subject of philosophic debates in which the carnal type was unfavorably compared with erotic yet spiritual and moderate
forms.
The legal status of pederasty in most countries is currently determined by whether or not the boy has reached the local age of consent
. Where and when it is illegal, it is treated as a form of child sexual abuse
.
as age-structured, egalitarian
and gender-structured
. Pederasty is the archetypal example of male age-structured homosexuality.
Anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer
distinguishes pederasty from pedophilia, which he defines as a separate fourth type, "grossly pathological in all societies of which we have record." According to Gorer, the main characteristic of homosexual pederasty is the age difference (either of generation or age-group) between the partners. In his study of native cultures, pederasty appears typically as a passing stage in which the adolescent is the beloved of an older male, who may act as a mentor. He remains as such until he reaches a certain developmental threshold, after which he in turn takes on an adolescent beloved of his own.
While relationships in ancient Greece involved boys from 12 to about 17 or 18 (Cantarella, 1992), in Renaissance Italy, the boys were typically between 14 and 19, and in Japan the younger member ranged in age from 11 to about 19 (Saikaku, 1990; Schalow, 1989).
In antiquity, pederasty was seen as an educational institution for the inculcation of moral and cultural values by the older man to the younger, as well as a form of sexual expression. It entered representation in history from the Archaic period onwards in Ancient Greece
, though Cretan ritual objects
reflected an already formalized practice date to the late Minoan civilization
, around 1650 BCE. According to Plato, in ancient Greece
, pederasty was a relationship
and bond – whether sexual or chaste – between an adult
man
and an adolescent boy
outside his immediate family. In Rome
, relations with boys took a more private and less civic path, with older men either taking advantage of dominant social status to extract sexual favors from their social inferiors, or carrying on illicit relationships with freeborn boys.
Early Christians condemned sodomy, within this blanket condemnation of sodomy, pederasty in particular was a target. The second-century preacher Clement of Alexandria
used divine pederasty as an indictment of Greek religion and the mythological
figures of Herakles, Apollo
, Poseidon
, Laius
, and Zeus
: "For your gods did not abstain even from boys. One loved Hylas
, another Hyacinthus, another Pelops
, another Chrysippus
, another Ganymedes. These are the gods your wives are to worship!" Early legal codes prescribed harsh penalties for violators. The law code of the Visigothic king Chindasuinth
called for both partners to be "emasculated
without delay, and be delivered up to the bishop
of the diocese
where the deed was committed to be placed in solitary confinement in a prison." These punishments were often linked to the penance given after the Sacrament of Confession. At Rome
, the punishment was burning at the stake since the time of Theodosius I
(390). Nonetheless the practice continued to surface, giving rise to proverbs such as With wine and boys around, the monks have no need of the Devil to tempt them, an early Christian saying from the Middle East.
Pederasty was notable in Moorish Spain. It was present in Tuscany
and northern Italy
during the Renaissance
. It also was documented in medieval and Tsarist Russia
.Elsewhere, it was practiced in pre-Modern Japan until the Meiji restoration
.
”). Late Latin
“pæderasta” was borrowed in the sixteenth century directly from Plato’s classical Greek in The Symposium. (Latin transliterates “” as “ae”.) The word first appeared in the English language during the Renaissance
, as “pæderastie” (e.g. in Samuel Purchas
' Pilgrimage.), in the sense of sexual relations between men and boys. Beside its use in the classical sense, the term has also been used as a synonym for anal sex
, irrespective of the nature of the partner. A nineteenth century sex treatise discusses men practicing the "insertion of the penis into the anus of women," as "pederasty with their wives."
The commonly accepted reference definitions of pederasty refer to a sexual relationship, or to copulation, between older and younger males. The OED offers: "Homosexual relations between a man and a boy; homosexual anal intercourse, usually with a boy or younger man as the passive partner." The concise OED has: “Sexual intercourse between a man and a boy.” When describing pederasts, some focus solely on the mechanics of copulation, such as the Merriam-Webster (on-line edition): “one who practices anal intercourse especially with a boy”. Other dictionaries offer a more general definition, such as "homosexual relations between men and boys" or "homosexual relations, especially between a male adult and a boy or young man." The limitation of pederasty to anal sex with a boy is contested by sexologists. Francoeur regards it as "common but incorrect," while Haeberle describes it as "a modern usage resulting from a misunderstanding of the original term and ignorance of its historical implications."
Academic and social studies sources propose more expansive definitions of the term. The Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender & Queer Culture offers “The erotic relationship between an adult male and a youth, generally one between the ages of twelve and seventeen, in which the older partner is attracted to the younger one who returns his affection.”Pederasty, An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender & Queer Culture, Vern L. Bullough The Encyclopedia of Homosexuality suggests "Pederasty is the erotic relationship between an adult male and a boy, generally one between the ages of twelve and seventeen, in which the older partner is attracted to the younger one who returns his affection, whether or not the liaison leads to overt sexual contact."
Pederastic art shows seduction scenes as well as sexual relations. In the seduction scenes the man is standing, grasping the boy's chin with one hand and reaching to fondle his genitals with the other. In the sexual scenes, the partners stand embracing face to face, the older of the two engaged in intercrural sex
with the younger, who (usually but not always) does not show arousal. Anal sex is almost never shown, and then only as something eliciting surprise in the observers. The practice was ostensibly disparaged, the Athenians often naming it jocularly after their Dorian neighbors ("cretanize," "laconize," "chalcidize"). While historians such as Dover and Halperin hold that only the man experienced pleasure, art and poetry indicate reciprocity of desire, and other historians assert that it is "a modern fairy tale that the younger eromenos was never aroused."
Pederastic couples were said to be feared by tyrants, because the bond between the friends was stronger than that of obedience to a tyrannical ruler. Plutarch gives as examples the Athenians Harmodius and Aristogeiton
. Others, such as Aristotle, claimed that the Cretan lawgivers encouraged pederasty as a means of population control
, by directing love and sexual desire into relations with males.
From the early Republican times of Ancient Rome
, it was perfectly normal for a man to desire and pursue boys. However, penetration was illegal for free born youths; the only boys who were legally allowed to perform as a passive sexual partner were slaves or former slaves known as "freedmen", and then only with regard to their former masters. For slaves there was no protection under the law even against rape.
The result was that in Roman
times, pederasty largely lost its function as a ritual part of education and was instead seen as an activity primarily driven by one's sexual desires and competing with desire for women. The social acceptance of pederastic relations waxed and waned during the centuries. Conservative thinkers condemned it — along with other forms of indulgence. Tacitus
attacks the Greek customs of "gymnasia et otia et turpes amores" (palaestra
e, idleness, and shameful loves).
Other writers spent no effort censuring pederasty per se, but praised or blamed its various aspects. Martial
appears to have favored it, going as far as to essentialize not the sexual use of the catamite
but his nature as a boy: upon being discovered by his wife "inside a boy" and offered the "same thing" by her, he retorts with a list of mythological personages who, despite being married, took young male lovers, and concludes by rejecting her offer since "a woman merely has two vaginas."
In central Asia the practice is reputed to have long been widespread, and remains a part of the culture, as exemplified by the proverb, Women for breeding, boys for pleasure, but melons for sheer delight. In the Ottoman Empire
culture, young male dancers, usually cross-dressed in feminine attire were called Köçek
.
In post-Islamic Persia, where, as Louis Crompton claims, "boy love flourished spectacularly", art and literature also made frequent use of the pederastic topos. These celebrate the love of the wine boy, as do the paintings and drawings of artists such as Reza Abbasi
(1565 1635). Western travelers reported that at Abbas'
court (some time between 1627 and 1629) they saw evidence of homoerotic practices. Male houses of prostitution amrad khaneh, "houses of the beardless", were legally recognized and paid taxes.
Osman Agha of Temeşvar
who fell captive to the Austrians in 1688 wrote in his memoirs that one night an Austrian boy approached him for sex, telling him "for I know all Turks are pederasts".
In 1770s, Âşık Sadık the poet wrote, in an address to the Sultan: Lût kavmi döğüşür, put kavmi bozar. Askerin lûtîdir, bil Padişahım ("The people of Lot fight, the people of idolatry spoil. Know, my Sultan, that your soldiers are sodomites").
In Afghanistan
in 2009, the British Army
commissioned a report into the sexuality of the local men after British soldiers reported the discomfort at witnessing adult males involved in sexual relations with boys. The report stated that though illegal, there was a tradition of such relationships in the country, known as "bache bazi" or boy play, and that it was especially strong around Kandahar
.
an pederasty. It was prevalent in the religious community and samurai
society from the mediaeval
period on, and eventually grew to permeate all of society. It fell out of favor around the end of the 19th century, concurrent with the growing European influence.
and the Thinkleets we read, 'The most repugnant of all their practices is that of male concubinage
. A Kodiak mother will select her handsomest and most promising boy, and dress and rear him as a girl, teaching him only domestic duties, keeping him at women's work, associating him with women and girls, in order to render his effeminacy complete. Arriving at the age of ten or fifteen years, he is married to some wealthy man who regards such a companion as a great acquisition. These male concubines are called Achnutschik or Schopans' (the authorities quoted being Holmberg, Langsdorff, Billing, Choris, Lisiansky and Marchand). The same is the case in Nootka Sound
and the Aleutian Islands, where 'male concubinage obtains throughout, but not to the same extent as amongst the Koniagas.' The objects of unnatural affection have their beards carefully plucked out as soon as the face-hair begins to grow, and their chins are tattooed like those of the women. In California
the first missionaries found the same practice, the youths being called Joya."
. One aspect was that of the father procuring a younger lover for his son. Juan de Torquemada
mentions that if the (younger) boy was seduced by a stranger, the penalty was equivalent to that for adultery. In the 16th century, Bernal Diaz reported seeing statues of male pairs making love in the temples at Cape Catoche, Yucatan
.
Reflecting the conflicted outlook on male loves, some northern European writers ascribed pederastic tendencies to populations in southern latitudes. Richard Francis Burton
evolved his theory of the Sotadic zone
, an area bounded roughly by N. Lat. 43° N. Lat. 30°, stretching from the western shores of the Mediterranean Sea
to the Pacific Ocean
. Likewise, Wilhelm Kroll, writing in the Pauly-Wissowa
encyclopaedia in 1906, asserted that "The roots of pederasty are found first of all in the existence of a contrary sexual feeling that is probably more frequent in southern regions than in countries with moderate climates."
into the 20th century, public boarding schools were limited to boys and all the teachers were male. Some upper class boys were sent to boarding school by age 7 or 8, and they studied there through the adolescent years. Some teachers justified homosexual relationships based on the Classics, both between the older and younger boys, and between teachers and boys. However, there were some scandals around such relationships. In the mid-19th century, William Johnson Cory
, a renowned master at Eton from 1845 until his forced resignation in 1872, evolved a style of pedagogic pederasty which influenced a number of his pupils. His Ionica, a work of poetry reflecting his pederastic sensibilities, was read in intellectual circles and “made a stir” at Oxford in 1859. Oscar Browning
, another Eton master and former student of Cory, followed in his tutor’s footsteps, only to be likewise dismissed in 1875. Both are thought to have influenced Oxford don Walter Pater
, whose aesthetics promoted pederasty as the truest expression of classical culture.
Also in 19th-century England, pederasty was a theme in the work of several writers known as the "Uranian poets". Although most of the writers of Uranian poetry and prose are today considered minor literary figures, the prominent Uranian
representatives --- Walter Pater
, Gerard Manley Hopkins
, and Oscar Wilde
– are figures of worldwide renown. Hopkins and Wilde were both deeply influenced by Pater's work. Wilde wrote of pederastic and homoerotic culture—though not in the "elevated" pederastic sense that it held for Pater and Hopkins – in a number of works. In the case of Hopkins, "Hopkins often was, it must be admitted, strikingly Ruskinian in his love of Aristotelian particulars and their arrangements; however, it was at the foot of Pater – the foremost Victorian unifier of ‘eros, pedagogy, and aesthetics’ – that Hopkins would ever remain." Another notable late 19th-century writer on pederasty was John Addington Symonds
, whose essays, "A Problem in Greek Ethics" and "A Problem in Modern Ethics", were among the first defenses of homosexuality
in the English language.
industrialist Friedrich Alfred Krupp, which drove him to suicide, by some reports. In the same vein, in a work that was to influence the evolution of communism
's attitude towards same-sex love, the German political philosopher Friedrich Engels
, Karl Marx
's collaborator, denounced the ancient Greeks for "the abominable practice of sodomy" and for degrading "their gods and themselves with the myth of Ganymede".
The Wandervogel
movement, a youth organization emphasizing a romantic view of nature, began in 1896, the same year that the journal Der Eigene
went to press. It was published by a twenty-two-year-old German (Adolf Brand
), and it advocated classical pederasty as a cure for the moral flabbiness of German youth. Influenced by the ideas of Gustav Wyneken
, the Wandervogel movement was open about its homoerotic tendencies. Affection between males was supposed to be expressed in a nonsexual way. The founding of Young Wandervogel happened largely as a reaction to the public scandal about these erotic tendencies, which were said to alienate young men from women.
Until the 1970s, English "public schools
" were boarding schools whose male teachers educated young and adolescent boys only. They emphasized study of Greek and Latin classics. The all-male environment encouraged “hotbeds of pederasty” into the twentieth century. C. S. Lewis
, when talking about his life at Malvern College
, an English public school
, acknowledged that pederasty "was the only counterpoise to the social struggle; the one oasis (though green only with weeds and moist only with foetid water) in the burning desert of competitive ambition."
same-sex love — relations with young people on the threshold of becoming adults — whether for pleasure or to further social goals, is no longer widely practiced in the West, despite its lawful status in many countries. Feminist
and postmodern
theories describe such relations as an abuse of power when the older partner is in a position of educational, religious
, economic
, or other form of institutional authority over the younger partner. Pederasty is widely censured, whether legally or illegally expressed. Instances of it, or of homosexual behavior among public men, have had severe political repercussions. (For example, the Mark Foley scandal
, or "Pagegate", in which apparent abuse of pages in the United States
in 2006 may have contributed to the Democratic capture of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate in the following fall elections.) The United States appears to be moving towards a more restrictive approach to such relationships. In 1983, for instance, Democratic Congressman Gerry Studds
admitted having had an affair with a 17-year-old page and was censured by the House of Representatives, but he continued his career in Congress.
The Catholic Church has been rocked in the 21st century by long-delayed accounts of child-sex abuse. After resistance to revelations, it is working to control activities of its priests. On February 2, 1961 the Vatican
issued a document, “Instruction on the Careful Selection and Training of Candidates for the States of Perfection and Sacred Orders,” barring from the priesthood anyone who has "perverse inclinations to homosexuality
or pederasty."
Though pederasty was once accepted in many cultures, some modern observers have retrospectively labeled it abusive
. Enid Bloch argues that many Greek boys who were involved in pederastic relationships may have been harmed by the experience, if the relationship included anal sex
. Bloch writes that the boy may have been traumatized
by knowing that he was violating social customs. According to her, the "most shameful thing that could happen to any Greek male was penetration by another male."
Bloch further argues that vases showing "a boy standing perfectly still as a man reaches out for his genitals" indicate the boy may have been "psychologically immobilized, unable to move or run away." Many vases, however, show the boys responding warmly to the man's advances, placing their hands around the man's neck or on his arm, a gesture thought to indicate affection and reciprocity. Other vases show the boy running away.
Ancient Greece
See bibliography of Greek pederasty
Europe
Japan
See bibliography of Japanese pederasty
North
and South America
Muslim
Lands
See bibliography of pederasty in the Middle East and Central Asia
Pederasty and child sexual abuse
See bibliography of child sexual abuse
Historically, pederasty has existed as a variety of customs and practices within different cultures. The status of pederasty has changed over the course of history; at times it has been considered an ideal, and at other times a crime.
In European history, its most structured cultural manifestation was Athenian pederasty
Athenian pederasty
Athenian pederasty entailed a formal bond between an adult man and an adolescent boy outside his immediate family, consisting of loving and often sexual relations...
, which became most prominent in the 6th century BCE
Common Era
Common Era ,abbreviated as CE, is an alternative designation for the calendar era originally introduced by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century, traditionally identified with Anno Domini .Dates before the year 1 CE are indicated by the usage of BCE, short for Before the Common Era Common Era...
. Greek pederasty's various forms were the subject of philosophic debates in which the carnal type was unfavorably compared with erotic yet spiritual and moderate
Sophrosyne
Sophrosyne is a Greek philosophical term etymologically meaning healthy-mindedness and from there self-control or moderation guided by knowledge and balance....
forms.
The legal status of pederasty in most countries is currently determined by whether or not the boy has reached the local age of consent
Age of consent
While the phrase age of consent typically does not appear in legal statutes, when used in relation to sexual activity, the age of consent is the minimum age at which a person is considered to be legally competent to consent to sexual acts. The European Union calls it the legal age for sexual...
. Where and when it is illegal, it is treated as a form of child sexual abuse
Child sexual abuse
Child sexual abuse is a form of child abuse in which an adult or older adolescent uses a child for sexual stimulation. Forms of child sexual abuse include asking or pressuring a child to engage in sexual activities , indecent exposure with intent to gratify their own sexual desires or to...
.
Expressions
Anthropologists propose three subdivisions of homosexualityHomosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
as age-structured, egalitarian
Gay community
The gay community, or LGBT community, is a loosely defined grouping of LGBT and LGBT-supportive people, organizations and subcultures, united by a common culture and civil rights movements. These communities generally celebrate pride, diversity, individuality, and sexuality...
and gender-structured
Transgender
Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....
. Pederasty is the archetypal example of male age-structured homosexuality.
Anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer
Geoffrey Gorer
Geoffrey Gorer, English anthropologist and author , noted for his application of psychoanalytic techniques to anthropology.He was educated at Charterhouse and at Jesus College, Cambridge. During the 1930s he wrote unpublished fiction and drama. His first book was The Revolutionary Ideas of the...
distinguishes pederasty from pedophilia, which he defines as a separate fourth type, "grossly pathological in all societies of which we have record." According to Gorer, the main characteristic of homosexual pederasty is the age difference (either of generation or age-group) between the partners. In his study of native cultures, pederasty appears typically as a passing stage in which the adolescent is the beloved of an older male, who may act as a mentor. He remains as such until he reaches a certain developmental threshold, after which he in turn takes on an adolescent beloved of his own.
Age range
Some modern observers restrict the age of the younger partner to "generally between twelve and seventeen", though historically the spread was somewhat greater. The younger partner must, in some sense, not be fully mature; this could include young men in their late teens or early twenties.While relationships in ancient Greece involved boys from 12 to about 17 or 18 (Cantarella, 1992), in Renaissance Italy, the boys were typically between 14 and 19, and in Japan the younger member ranged in age from 11 to about 19 (Saikaku, 1990; Schalow, 1989).
Historical synopsis
Pederasty in ancient Greece
Pederasty in ancient Greece was a socially acknowledged relationship between an adult and a younger male usually in his teens. It was characteristic of the Archaic and Classical periods...
, though Cretan ritual objects
Cretan pederasty
Cretan pederasty was an archaic form of pederasty that involved the ritual kidnapping of a noble boy by an adult male of the aristocratic class, with the consent of the boy's father....
reflected an already formalized practice date to the late Minoan civilization
Minoan civilization
The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age civilization that arose on the island of Crete and flourished from approximately the 27th century BC to the 15th century BC. It was rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century through the work of the British archaeologist Arthur Evans...
, around 1650 BCE. According to Plato, in ancient Greece
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
, pederasty was a relationship
Intimate relationship
An intimate relationship is a particularly close interpersonal relationship that involves physical or emotional intimacy. Physical intimacy is characterized by romantic or passionate love and attachment, or sexual activity. The term is also sometimes used euphemistically for a sexual...
and bond – whether sexual or chaste – between an adult
Adult
An adult is a human being or living organism that is of relatively mature age, typically associated with sexual maturity and the attainment of reproductive age....
man
Man
The term man is used for an adult human male . However, man is sometimes used to refer to humanity as a whole...
and an adolescent boy
Boy
A boy is a young male human , as contrasted to its female counterpart, girl, or an adult male, a man.The term "boy" is primarily used to indicate biological sex distinctions, cultural gender role distinctions or both...
outside his immediate family. In Rome
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
, relations with boys took a more private and less civic path, with older men either taking advantage of dominant social status to extract sexual favors from their social inferiors, or carrying on illicit relationships with freeborn boys.
Early Christians condemned sodomy, within this blanket condemnation of sodomy, pederasty in particular was a target. The second-century preacher Clement of Alexandria
Clement of Alexandria
Titus Flavius Clemens , known as Clement of Alexandria , was a Christian theologian and the head of the noted Catechetical School of Alexandria. Clement is best remembered as the teacher of Origen...
used divine pederasty as an indictment of Greek religion and the mythological
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
figures of Herakles, Apollo
Apollo
Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...
, Poseidon
Poseidon
Poseidon was the god of the sea, and, as "Earth-Shaker," of the earthquakes in Greek mythology. The name of the sea-god Nethuns in Etruscan was adopted in Latin for Neptune in Roman mythology: both were sea gods analogous to Poseidon...
, Laius
Laius
In Greek mythology, King Laius, or Laios of Thebes was a divine hero and key personage in the Theban founding myth. Son of Labdacus, he was raised by the regent Lycus after the death of his father.-Abduction of Chrysippus:...
, and Zeus
Zeus
In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the "Father of Gods and men" who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and his Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.Zeus was the child of Cronus...
: "For your gods did not abstain even from boys. One loved Hylas
Hylas
In Greek mythology, Hylas was the son of King Theiodamas of the Dryopians. Roman sources such as Ovid state that Hylas' father was Hercules and his mother was the nymph Melite, or that his mother was the wife of Theiodamas, whose adulterous affair with Heracles caused the war between him and her...
, another Hyacinthus, another Pelops
Pelops
In Greek mythology, Pelops , was king of Pisa in the Peloponnesus. He was the founder of the House of Atreus through his son of that name....
, another Chrysippus
Chrysippus
Chrysippus of Soli was a Greek Stoic philosopher. He was a native of Soli, Cilicia, but moved to Athens as a young man, where he became a pupil of Cleanthes in the Stoic school. When Cleanthes died, around 230 BC, Chrysippus became the third head of the school...
, another Ganymedes. These are the gods your wives are to worship!" Early legal codes prescribed harsh penalties for violators. The law code of the Visigothic king Chindasuinth
Chindasuinth
Chindasuinth was Visigothic King of Spain, from 642 until his death. He succeeded Tulga, from whom he usurped the throne in a coup; he was "officially" elected by the nobles and anointed by the bishops 30 April 642....
called for both partners to be "emasculated
Emasculation
Emasculation is the removal of the genitalia of a male, notably the penis and/or the testicles.By extension, the word has also come to mean to render a male less of a man, or to make a male feel less of a man by humiliation. This metaphorical usage of the word is much more common than the...
without delay, and be delivered up to the bishop
Bishop
A bishop is an ordained or consecrated member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight. Within the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, in the Assyrian Church of the East, in the Independent Catholic Churches, and in the...
of the diocese
Diocese
A diocese is the district or see under the supervision of a bishop. It is divided into parishes.An archdiocese is more significant than a diocese. An archdiocese is presided over by an archbishop whose see may have or had importance due to size or historical significance...
where the deed was committed to be placed in solitary confinement in a prison." These punishments were often linked to the penance given after the Sacrament of Confession. At Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, the punishment was burning at the stake since the time of Theodosius I
Theodosius I
Theodosius I , also known as Theodosius the Great, was Roman Emperor from 379 to 395. Theodosius was the last emperor to rule over both the eastern and the western halves of the Roman Empire. During his reign, the Goths secured control of Illyricum after the Gothic War, establishing their homeland...
(390). Nonetheless the practice continued to surface, giving rise to proverbs such as With wine and boys around, the monks have no need of the Devil to tempt them, an early Christian saying from the Middle East.
Pederasty was notable in Moorish Spain. It was present in Tuscany
Tuscany
Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....
and northern Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
during the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
. It also was documented in medieval and Tsarist Russia
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
.Elsewhere, it was practiced in pre-Modern Japan until the Meiji restoration
Meiji Restoration
The , also known as the Meiji Ishin, Revolution, Reform or Renewal, was a chain of events that restored imperial rule to Japan in 1868...
.
Etymology and usage
“Pederasty” derives from the combination of “” (the Greek stem for child or boy) with “” (Greek for lover; cf. “erosEros (love)
Eros is one of the four words in Ancient Greek which can be rendered into English as “love”. The other three are storge, philia and agape...
”). Late Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
“pæderasta” was borrowed in the sixteenth century directly from Plato’s classical Greek in The Symposium. (Latin transliterates “” as “ae”.) The word first appeared in the English language during the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
, as “pæderastie” (e.g. in Samuel Purchas
Samuel Purchas
Samuel Purchas , was an English travel writer, a near-contemporary of Richard Hakluyt.Purchas was born at Thaxted, Essex, and graduated at St John's College, Cambridge, in 1600; later he became a B.D., and with this degree was admitted at Oxford in 1615. In 1604 he was presented by James I to the...
' Pilgrimage.), in the sense of sexual relations between men and boys. Beside its use in the classical sense, the term has also been used as a synonym for anal sex
Anal sex
Anal sex is the sex act in which the penis is inserted into the anus of a sexual partner. The term can also include other sexual acts involving the anus, including pegging, anilingus , fingering, and object insertion.Common misconception describes anal sex as practiced almost exclusively by gay men...
, irrespective of the nature of the partner. A nineteenth century sex treatise discusses men practicing the "insertion of the penis into the anus of women," as "pederasty with their wives."
The commonly accepted reference definitions of pederasty refer to a sexual relationship, or to copulation, between older and younger males. The OED offers: "Homosexual relations between a man and a boy; homosexual anal intercourse, usually with a boy or younger man as the passive partner." The concise OED has: “Sexual intercourse between a man and a boy.” When describing pederasts, some focus solely on the mechanics of copulation, such as the Merriam-Webster (on-line edition): “one who practices anal intercourse especially with a boy”. Other dictionaries offer a more general definition, such as "homosexual relations between men and boys" or "homosexual relations, especially between a male adult and a boy or young man." The limitation of pederasty to anal sex with a boy is contested by sexologists. Francoeur regards it as "common but incorrect," while Haeberle describes it as "a modern usage resulting from a misunderstanding of the original term and ignorance of its historical implications."
Academic and social studies sources propose more expansive definitions of the term. The Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender & Queer Culture offers “The erotic relationship between an adult male and a youth, generally one between the ages of twelve and seventeen, in which the older partner is attracted to the younger one who returns his affection.”Pederasty, An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender & Queer Culture, Vern L. Bullough The Encyclopedia of Homosexuality suggests "Pederasty is the erotic relationship between an adult male and a boy, generally one between the ages of twelve and seventeen, in which the older partner is attracted to the younger one who returns his affection, whether or not the liaison leads to overt sexual contact."
Social class factors
In Athens, the slaves were expressly forbidden from entering into pederastic relations with the free-born boys. In medieval civilization, pederastic relations "were so readily accepted in upper-class circles that there was often little or no effort to conceal their existence."Ancient world
Greeks
Plato was an early critic of sexual intercourse in pederastic relationships, proposing that men's love of boys avoid all carnal expression and instead progress from admiration of the lover's specific virtues to love of virtue itself in abstract form. While copulation with boys was often criticized and seen as shameful and brutish, other aspects of the relationship were considered beneficial, as indicated in proverbs such as A lover is the best friend a boy will ever have.Pederastic art shows seduction scenes as well as sexual relations. In the seduction scenes the man is standing, grasping the boy's chin with one hand and reaching to fondle his genitals with the other. In the sexual scenes, the partners stand embracing face to face, the older of the two engaged in intercrural sex
Intercrural sex
Intercrural sex , also known as femoral/interfemoral sex/intercourse, is a type of non-penetrative sex, in which a male places his penis between his partner's thighs , and thrusts to create friction.-Heterosexuality:The sex education and sexual experimentation of adolescents may feature intercrural...
with the younger, who (usually but not always) does not show arousal. Anal sex is almost never shown, and then only as something eliciting surprise in the observers. The practice was ostensibly disparaged, the Athenians often naming it jocularly after their Dorian neighbors ("cretanize," "laconize," "chalcidize"). While historians such as Dover and Halperin hold that only the man experienced pleasure, art and poetry indicate reciprocity of desire, and other historians assert that it is "a modern fairy tale that the younger eromenos was never aroused."
Pederastic couples were said to be feared by tyrants, because the bond between the friends was stronger than that of obedience to a tyrannical ruler. Plutarch gives as examples the Athenians Harmodius and Aristogeiton
Harmodius and Aristogeiton
Harmodius and Aristogeiton were two men from ancient Athens...
. Others, such as Aristotle, claimed that the Cretan lawgivers encouraged pederasty as a means of population control
Population control
Human population control is the practice of artificially altering the rate of growth of a human population.Historically, human population control has been implemented by limiting the population's birth rate, usually by government mandate, and has been undertaken as a response to factors including...
, by directing love and sexual desire into relations with males.
Romans
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
, it was perfectly normal for a man to desire and pursue boys. However, penetration was illegal for free born youths; the only boys who were legally allowed to perform as a passive sexual partner were slaves or former slaves known as "freedmen", and then only with regard to their former masters. For slaves there was no protection under the law even against rape.
The result was that in Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
times, pederasty largely lost its function as a ritual part of education and was instead seen as an activity primarily driven by one's sexual desires and competing with desire for women. The social acceptance of pederastic relations waxed and waned during the centuries. Conservative thinkers condemned it — along with other forms of indulgence. Tacitus
Tacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories—examine the reigns of the Roman Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors...
attacks the Greek customs of "gymnasia et otia et turpes amores" (palaestra
Palaestra
The palaestra was the ancient Greek wrestling school. The events that did not require a lot of space, such as boxing and wrestling, were practised there...
e, idleness, and shameful loves).
Other writers spent no effort censuring pederasty per se, but praised or blamed its various aspects. Martial
Martial
Marcus Valerius Martialis , was a Latin poet from Hispania best known for his twelve books of Epigrams, published in Rome between AD 86 and 103, during the reigns of the emperors Domitian, Nerva and Trajan...
appears to have favored it, going as far as to essentialize not the sexual use of the catamite
Catamite
A catamite was a handsome youth kept as a sexual companion in ancient Rome, usually in a pederastic relationship. The word derives from the proper noun Catamitus, the Latinized form of Ganymede, the beautiful Trojan youth abducted by Zeus to be his companion and cupbearer...
but his nature as a boy: upon being discovered by his wife "inside a boy" and offered the "same thing" by her, he retorts with a list of mythological personages who, despite being married, took young male lovers, and concludes by rejecting her offer since "a woman merely has two vaginas."
Middle East and Central Asia
In pre-modern Islam there was a "widespread conviction that beardless youths possessed a temptation to adult men as a whole, and not merely to a small minority of deviants."In central Asia the practice is reputed to have long been widespread, and remains a part of the culture, as exemplified by the proverb, Women for breeding, boys for pleasure, but melons for sheer delight. In the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
culture, young male dancers, usually cross-dressed in feminine attire were called Köçek
Köçek
The köçek phenomenon is one of the significant features of Ottoman Empire culture...
.
Reza Abbasi
Riza Abbasi, Riza yi-Abbasi or Reza-e Abbasi, رضا عباسی in Persian, usually "Riza" or Reza Abbasi also Aqa Riza or Āqā Riżā Kāshānī was the leading Persian miniaturist of the Isfahan School during the later Safavid period, spending most of his career working for Shah Abbas I...
(1565 1635). Western travelers reported that at Abbas'
Abbas I of Persia
Shāh ‘Abbās the Great was Shah of Iran, and generally considered the greatest ruler of the Safavid dynasty. He was the third son of Shah Mohammad....
court (some time between 1627 and 1629) they saw evidence of homoerotic practices. Male houses of prostitution amrad khaneh, "houses of the beardless", were legally recognized and paid taxes.
Osman Agha of Temeşvar
Timisoara
Timișoara is the capital city of Timiș County, in western Romania. One of the largest Romanian cities, with an estimated population of 311,586 inhabitants , and considered the informal capital city of the historical region of Banat, Timișoara is the main social, economic and cultural center in the...
who fell captive to the Austrians in 1688 wrote in his memoirs that one night an Austrian boy approached him for sex, telling him "for I know all Turks are pederasts".
In 1770s, Âşık Sadık the poet wrote, in an address to the Sultan: Lût kavmi döğüşür, put kavmi bozar. Askerin lûtîdir, bil Padişahım ("The people of Lot fight, the people of idolatry spoil. Know, my Sultan, that your soldiers are sodomites").
In Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
in 2009, the British Army
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
commissioned a report into the sexuality of the local men after British soldiers reported the discomfort at witnessing adult males involved in sexual relations with boys. The report stated that though illegal, there was a tradition of such relationships in the country, known as "bache bazi" or boy play, and that it was especially strong around Kandahar
Kandahar
Kandahar is the second largest city in Afghanistan, with a population of about 512,200 as of 2011. It is the capital of Kandahar Province, located in the south of the country at about 1,005 m above sea level...
.
Japan
In Japan, the practice of shudō (衆道), "the Way of the Young", paralleled closely the course of EuropeEurope
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an pederasty. It was prevalent in the religious community and samurai
Samurai
is the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany a person in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau...
society from the mediaeval
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
period on, and eventually grew to permeate all of society. It fell out of favor around the end of the 19th century, concurrent with the growing European influence.
North America
"Of the Koniagas of Kodiak IslandKodiak Island
Kodiak Island is a large island on the south coast of the U.S. state of Alaska, separated from the Alaska mainland by the Shelikof Strait. The largest island in the Kodiak Archipelago, Kodiak Island is the second largest island in the United States and the 80th largest island in the world, with an...
and the Thinkleets we read, 'The most repugnant of all their practices is that of male concubinage
Concubinage
Concubinage is the state of a woman or man in an ongoing, usually matrimonially oriented, relationship with somebody to whom they cannot be married, often because of a difference in social status or economic condition.-Concubinage:...
. A Kodiak mother will select her handsomest and most promising boy, and dress and rear him as a girl, teaching him only domestic duties, keeping him at women's work, associating him with women and girls, in order to render his effeminacy complete. Arriving at the age of ten or fifteen years, he is married to some wealthy man who regards such a companion as a great acquisition. These male concubines are called Achnutschik or Schopans' (the authorities quoted being Holmberg, Langsdorff, Billing, Choris, Lisiansky and Marchand). The same is the case in Nootka Sound
Nootka Sound
Nootka Sound is a complex inlet or sound of the Pacific Ocean on the rugged west coast of Vancouver Island, in the Canadian province of British Columbia. Historically also known as King George's Sound, as a strait it separates Vancouver Island and Nootka Island.-History:The inlet is part of the...
and the Aleutian Islands, where 'male concubinage obtains throughout, but not to the same extent as amongst the Koniagas.' The objects of unnatural affection have their beards carefully plucked out as soon as the face-hair begins to grow, and their chins are tattooed like those of the women. In California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
the first missionaries found the same practice, the youths being called Joya."
Central America
Though early Mayans are thought to have been strongly antagonistic to same-sex relationships, later Mayan states employed pederastic practices. Their introduction was ascribed to the god ChinChin (Mayan god)
Chin is one of the names mentioned by Las Casas for a deity said to have introduced homosexual relationships to Mayan noblemen living in the 16th-century Verapaz provinces....
. One aspect was that of the father procuring a younger lover for his son. Juan de Torquemada
Fray Juan de Torquemada
Juan de Torquemada was a Franciscan friar, missionary and historian in Spanish colonial Mexico. He is most famous for his 1615 monumental history of the Indigenous entitled Los veinte y un libros rituales y Monarchia Indiana, commonly known as simply Monarchia Indiana...
mentions that if the (younger) boy was seduced by a stranger, the penalty was equivalent to that for adultery. In the 16th century, Bernal Diaz reported seeing statues of male pairs making love in the temples at Cape Catoche, Yucatan
Yucatán
Yucatán officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Yucatán is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 106 municipalities and its capital city is Mérida....
.
Europe
Pederastic eros in the West, while remaining mostly hidden, has nevertheless revealed itself in a variety of settings. Legal records are one of the more important windows into this secret world, since for much of the time pederastic relations, like other forms of homosexual relations, were illegal. The expression of desire through literature and art, albeit in coded fashion, can also afford a view of the pederastic interests of the author.Reflecting the conflicted outlook on male loves, some northern European writers ascribed pederastic tendencies to populations in southern latitudes. Richard Francis Burton
Richard Francis Burton
Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton KCMG FRGS was a British geographer, explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, linguist, poet, fencer and diplomat. He was known for his travels and explorations within Asia, Africa and the Americas as well as his...
evolved his theory of the Sotadic zone
Sotadic zone
The existence of a Sotadic zone was a hypothesis of Richard Francis Burton. It asserted that there existed a geographic zone in which homosexuality was particularly prevalent and tolerated....
, an area bounded roughly by N. Lat. 43° N. Lat. 30°, stretching from the western shores of the Mediterranean Sea
Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Anatolia and Europe, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant...
to the Pacific Ocean
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...
. Likewise, Wilhelm Kroll, writing in the Pauly-Wissowa
Pauly-Wissowa
The Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft, commonly called the Pauly–Wissowa or simply RE, is a German encyclopedia of classical scholarship. With its supplements it comprises over eighty volumes....
encyclopaedia in 1906, asserted that "The roots of pederasty are found first of all in the existence of a contrary sexual feeling that is probably more frequent in southern regions than in countries with moderate climates."
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a period that saw a rediscovery or renewed interest in the philosophy and art of the Classical period. The Roman Catholic Church suppressed homosexual and pederastic expressions of attraction, especially through the machinery of the Inquisition, most infamously the Spanish Inquisition. The Church could not repress all expressions of pederastic desire. According to an encyclopedia of GLBTQ culture, "The most conventional object of homoerotic desire [in art] was the adolescent youth, usually imagined as beardless."England
In EnglandEngland
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
into the 20th century, public boarding schools were limited to boys and all the teachers were male. Some upper class boys were sent to boarding school by age 7 or 8, and they studied there through the adolescent years. Some teachers justified homosexual relationships based on the Classics, both between the older and younger boys, and between teachers and boys. However, there were some scandals around such relationships. In the mid-19th century, William Johnson Cory
William Johnson Cory
William Johnson Cory , born William Johnson, was an educator and poet, born at Torrington, and educated at Eton, where he was afterwards a renowned master, nicknamed Tute by his pupils...
, a renowned master at Eton from 1845 until his forced resignation in 1872, evolved a style of pedagogic pederasty which influenced a number of his pupils. His Ionica, a work of poetry reflecting his pederastic sensibilities, was read in intellectual circles and “made a stir” at Oxford in 1859. Oscar Browning
Oscar Browning
Oscar Browning was an English writer, historian, and educational reformer. His greatest achievement was the cofounding, along with Henry Sidgwick, of the Cambridge University Day Training College in 1891...
, another Eton master and former student of Cory, followed in his tutor’s footsteps, only to be likewise dismissed in 1875. Both are thought to have influenced Oxford don Walter Pater
Walter Pater
Walter Horatio Pater was an English essayist, critic of art and literature, and writer of fiction.-Early life:...
, whose aesthetics promoted pederasty as the truest expression of classical culture.
Also in 19th-century England, pederasty was a theme in the work of several writers known as the "Uranian poets". Although most of the writers of Uranian poetry and prose are today considered minor literary figures, the prominent Uranian
Uranian
frame|right|From [[John Addington Symonds]]' 1891 book A Problem in Modern Ethics.Uranian is a 19th century term that referred to a person of a third sex — originally, someone with "a female psyche in a male body" who is sexually attracted to men, and later extended to cover homosexual gender...
representatives --- Walter Pater
Walter Pater
Walter Horatio Pater was an English essayist, critic of art and literature, and writer of fiction.-Early life:...
, Gerard Manley Hopkins
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. was an English poet, Roman Catholic convert, and Jesuit priest, whose posthumous 20th-century fame established him among the leading Victorian poets...
, and Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
– are figures of worldwide renown. Hopkins and Wilde were both deeply influenced by Pater's work. Wilde wrote of pederastic and homoerotic culture—though not in the "elevated" pederastic sense that it held for Pater and Hopkins – in a number of works. In the case of Hopkins, "Hopkins often was, it must be admitted, strikingly Ruskinian in his love of Aristotelian particulars and their arrangements; however, it was at the foot of Pater – the foremost Victorian unifier of ‘eros, pedagogy, and aesthetics’ – that Hopkins would ever remain." Another notable late 19th-century writer on pederasty was John Addington Symonds
John Addington Symonds
John Addington Symonds was an English poet and literary critic. Although he married and had a family, he was an early advocate of male love , which he believed could include pederastic as well as egalitarian relationships. He referred to it as l'amour de l'impossible...
, whose essays, "A Problem in Greek Ethics" and "A Problem in Modern Ethics", were among the first defenses of homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
in the English language.
Reaction and retrenchment
The end of the 19th century saw increasing conflict over the issue of social acceptance of pederasty. A number of other pederastic scandals erupted around this time, such as the one involving the GermanGermany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
industrialist Friedrich Alfred Krupp, which drove him to suicide, by some reports. In the same vein, in a work that was to influence the evolution of communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
's attitude towards same-sex love, the German political philosopher Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels was a German industrialist, social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research...
, Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
's collaborator, denounced the ancient Greeks for "the abominable practice of sodomy" and for degrading "their gods and themselves with the myth of Ganymede".
The Wandervogel
Wandervogel
Wandervogel is the name adopted by a popular movement of German youth groups from 1896 onward. The name can be translated as rambling, hiking or wandering bird and the ethos is to shake off the restrictions of society and get back to nature and freedom...
movement, a youth organization emphasizing a romantic view of nature, began in 1896, the same year that the journal Der Eigene
Der Eigene
Der Eigene was the first gay journal in the world, published from 1896 to 1932 by Adolf Brand in Berlin. Brand contributed many poems and articles himself...
went to press. It was published by a twenty-two-year-old German (Adolf Brand
Adolf Brand
Adolf Brand was a German writer, individualist anarchist and pioneering campaigner for the acceptance of male bisexuality and homosexuality.-Biography:...
), and it advocated classical pederasty as a cure for the moral flabbiness of German youth. Influenced by the ideas of Gustav Wyneken
Gustav Wyneken
Gustav Wyneken was a German educational reformer, free thinker and charismatic leader. His ideas and practice on education and youth became highly influential but were also controversial.-Early life:He was born to a Christian family, and studied Theology and Philology in Berlin...
, the Wandervogel movement was open about its homoerotic tendencies. Affection between males was supposed to be expressed in a nonsexual way. The founding of Young Wandervogel happened largely as a reaction to the public scandal about these erotic tendencies, which were said to alienate young men from women.
Until the 1970s, English "public schools
Public School (UK)
A public school, in common British usage, is a school that is neither administered nor financed by the state or from taxpayer contributions, and is instead funded by a combination of endowments, tuition fees and charitable contributions, usually existing as a non profit-making charitable trust...
" were boarding schools whose male teachers educated young and adolescent boys only. They emphasized study of Greek and Latin classics. The all-male environment encouraged “hotbeds of pederasty” into the twentieth century. C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland...
, when talking about his life at Malvern College
Malvern College
Malvern College is a coeducational independent school located on a 250 acre campus near the town centre of Malvern, Worcestershire in England. Founded on 25 January 1865, until 1992, the College was a secondary school for boys aged 13 to 18...
, an English public school
Public School (UK)
A public school, in common British usage, is a school that is neither administered nor financed by the state or from taxpayer contributions, and is instead funded by a combination of endowments, tuition fees and charitable contributions, usually existing as a non profit-making charitable trust...
, acknowledged that pederasty "was the only counterpoise to the social struggle; the one oasis (though green only with weeds and moist only with foetid water) in the burning desert of competitive ambition."
Modern expressions
LiminalLiminality
Liminality is a psychological, neurological, or metaphysical subjective state, conscious or unconscious, of being on the "threshold" of or between two different existential planes, as defined in neurological psychology and in the anthropological theories of ritual by such writers as Arnold van...
same-sex love — relations with young people on the threshold of becoming adults — whether for pleasure or to further social goals, is no longer widely practiced in the West, despite its lawful status in many countries. Feminist
Feminist theory
Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, or philosophical discourse, it aims to understand the nature of gender inequality...
and postmodern
Postmodern philosophy
Postmodern philosophy is a philosophical direction which is critical of the foundational assumptions and structures of philosophy. Beginning as a critique of Continental philosophy, it was heavily influenced by phenomenology, structuralism and existentialism, including writings of Georg Wilhelm...
theories describe such relations as an abuse of power when the older partner is in a position of educational, religious
Spiritual abuse
Spiritual abuse is a serious form of abuse which occurs when a person in a cult-religious authority or a person with a unique spiritual practice misleads and maltreats another person in the name of a deityor church or in the mystery of any spiritual concept...
, economic
Sexual harassment
Sexual harassment, is intimidation, bullying or coercion of a sexual nature, or the unwelcome or inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange for sexual favors. In some contexts or circumstances, sexual harassment is illegal. It includes a range of behavior from seemingly mild transgressions and...
, or other form of institutional authority over the younger partner. Pederasty is widely censured, whether legally or illegally expressed. Instances of it, or of homosexual behavior among public men, have had severe political repercussions. (For example, the Mark Foley scandal
Mark Foley scandal
The Mark Foley scandal, which broke in late September 2006, centers on soliciting e-mails and sexually suggestive instant messages sent by Mark Foley, a Republican Congressman from Florida, to teenaged boys who had formerly served as congressional pages...
, or "Pagegate", in which apparent abuse of pages in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in 2006 may have contributed to the Democratic capture of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate in the following fall elections.) The United States appears to be moving towards a more restrictive approach to such relationships. In 1983, for instance, Democratic Congressman Gerry Studds
Gerry Studds
Gerry Eastman Studds was an American Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts who served from 1973 until 1997. He was the first openly gay member of Congress in the U.S. In 1983 he was censured by the House of Representatives after he admitted to having had an affair with a 17-year-old page in...
admitted having had an affair with a 17-year-old page and was censured by the House of Representatives, but he continued his career in Congress.
The Catholic Church has been rocked in the 21st century by long-delayed accounts of child-sex abuse. After resistance to revelations, it is working to control activities of its priests. On February 2, 1961 the Vatican
Holy See
The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...
issued a document, “Instruction on the Careful Selection and Training of Candidates for the States of Perfection and Sacred Orders,” barring from the priesthood anyone who has "perverse inclinations to homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
or pederasty."
Child abuse issues
Though pederasty was once accepted in many cultures, some modern observers have retrospectively labeled it abusive
Sexual abuse
Sexual abuse, also referred to as molestation, is the forcing of undesired sexual behavior by one person upon another. When that force is immediate, of short duration, or infrequent, it is called sexual assault. The offender is referred to as a sexual abuser or molester...
. Enid Bloch argues that many Greek boys who were involved in pederastic relationships may have been harmed by the experience, if the relationship included anal sex
Anal sex
Anal sex is the sex act in which the penis is inserted into the anus of a sexual partner. The term can also include other sexual acts involving the anus, including pegging, anilingus , fingering, and object insertion.Common misconception describes anal sex as practiced almost exclusively by gay men...
. Bloch writes that the boy may have been traumatized
Psychological trauma
Psychological trauma is a type of damage to the psyche that occurs as a result of a traumatic event...
by knowing that he was violating social customs. According to her, the "most shameful thing that could happen to any Greek male was penetration by another male."
Bloch further argues that vases showing "a boy standing perfectly still as a man reaches out for his genitals" indicate the boy may have been "psychologically immobilized, unable to move or run away." Many vases, however, show the boys responding warmly to the man's advances, placing their hands around the man's neck or on his arm, a gesture thought to indicate affection and reciprocity. Other vases show the boy running away.
See also
- Age disparity in sexual relationshipsAge disparity in sexual relationshipsAge disparity in sexual relationships refers to sexual relations between people with a significant difference in age. Whether these relationships are accepted and the question of what counts as a significant difference in age has varied over time; and varies over cultures, different legal systems,...
- Catholic sex abuse cases
- EphebophiliaEphebophiliaEphebophilia is the sexual preference of adults for mid-to-late adolescents, generally ages 15 to 19. The term was originally used in the late 19th to mid 20th century, and has been more recently revisited by Ray Blanchard. It is one of a number of sexual preferences across age groups subsumed...
- Homosexuality and IslamHomosexuality and IslamLGBT topics and Islam are influenced by both the cultural-legal history of the nations with a large Muslim population, along with how specific passages in the Qur'an and statements attributed to the prophet Muhammad are interpreted. The mainstream interpretation of Qur'anic verses and hadith...
- LGBT themes in mythologyLGBT themes in mythologyLGBT themes in mythology refers to mythologies and religious narratives that include stories of romantic affection or sexuality between figures of the same sex or feature divine actions that result in changes in gender...
- Platonic lovePlatonic lovePlatonic love is a chaste and strong type of love that is non-sexual.-Amor Platonicus:The term amor platonicus was coined as early as the 15th century by the Florentine scholar Marsilio Ficino. Platonic love in this original sense of the term is examined in Plato's dialogue the Symposium, which has...
- ShotaconShotacon, sometimes shortened to , is a Japanese slang portmanteau of the phrase and describes an attraction to young boys, or an individual with such an attraction. Outside Japan, the term is used less often with this meaning. It refers to a genre of manga and anime wherein pre-pubescent or pubescent...
- North American Man/Boy Love AssociationNorth American Man/Boy Love AssociationThe North American Man/Boy Love Association is a pedophile and pederasty advocacy organization in the United States that works to abolish age of consent laws criminalizing adult sexual involvement with minors, and for the release of all men who have been jailed for sexual contacts with minors that...
(NAMBLA)
Further reading
GeneralAncient Greece
See bibliography of Greek pederasty
Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
- Michael Matthew Kaylor. Secreted Desires: The Major Uranians: Hopkins, Pater and Wilde (2006), a 500-page scholarly volume that considers the major Victorian writers of Uranian poetry and prose (the author has made this volume available in a free, open-access, PDF version).
- Rigoletto, Sergio. "Questioning Power Hierarchies: Michael Davidson and Literary Pederasty in Italy" in Studies in Social and Political Thought Issue 13 – March 2007
Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
See bibliography of Japanese pederasty
North
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
and South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
Lands
See bibliography of pederasty in the Middle East and Central Asia
Pederasty and child sexual abuse
See bibliography of child sexual abuse