Just for the sake of it, it's important to point out that men having sex with young women is clearly a big part of "straight history". For hundreds (actually thousands) of years it wasn't called anything other than "marriage", and for everything but a most recent sliver of time men couldn't be convicted of raping somebody considered their wife no matter the age.
But somehow that whole story seems to be forgotten because there is a history of men having sex with boys, too.
As one of my favourite drag queens would say, "Look over there!"
Certainly so. I got into a tussle with someone I won’t name, over Hugh Edwards’ excellent short novel All Night at Mr. Stanyhurst’s (1933), which is set in the early 19th Century and whose protagonist has a 16-year-old mistress (who began her romantic-sexual life earlier, at age 14). My correspondent felt that the girl’s age made the novel “creepy”. Well, people gonna react how they’re gonna react, but I pointed out rather forcefully to him that marriage at those ages was completely unexceptional at the time, lifespans were shorter, “adolescence” didn’t exist, and in essence it was no BFD.
These days, under-reaction to certain things is practically a crime in itself. So in his eyes, by liking this book, I was nearly guilty of child rape myself. I don’t talk to this rather well-known fellow anymore, although I still admire his accomplishments.
I’m not politically correct about a LOT of things, in the sense that I just don’t get too worked up most of the time. And if early on I rejected the Roman Catholic Church’s strictures on sex, including the ways we think and talk about it, I’m certainly not going to turn around and accept PROGRESSIVES’ strictures! I mean, PLEASE.
My thinking in these areas is pretty close to Camille Paglia’s, and is more of a free-wheeling Seventies attitude. I’m not trying to shock people, but I don’t care if I do.
